


The Abridged Series

by HellaSkella



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Parody, me being gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26089639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HellaSkella/pseuds/HellaSkella
Summary: By popular demand, I am posting this little thing I decided to make for my friend who didn't want to actually read the books, but would enjoy reading my liberal use of the word fuck and also me saying gay rights.
Kudos: 3





	1. Obligatory Prologue

So basically before we get into this story, here’s a little bit of background information that it’s kind of relevant to know. Unfortunately Tolkien assumed that the only thing you might not be fully in the clear about is Hobbit society which I guess is true, although I wish he talked a little bit about the old Lore and all the references to the Silmarillion that he consistently makes throughout the book, but he didn’t talk about it here. Anyway I’m going to provide a similar basis for the prologue of this abridged version of the story, which I’m assuming you are reading either because you are looking for a dumber, gayer version of the thousand page text without actually having to read it, or you are my friend and you think that I am very funny. This will primarily be featuring information about Hobbits and the prequel book _The Hobbit_ and nothing about the Silmarillion which I haven’t read because it sounds like it would give me a headache. If you’re already familiar with Lord of the Rings and just want to get to the Comedy, you can go ahead and skip this chapter because it’s mostly boring and you probably know everything already. 

Anyway, **Concerning Hobbits:**

So, you as the reader are supposedly reading what is a translation of _The Red Book_ , which is a text from the olden times when there were Hobbits having adventures and they wrote them down. There were two stories in this book, one was _There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Tale_ , more popularly published as _The Hobbit_ , and it was written by a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who went on an adventure with Gandalf the Wizard and thirteen dwarves. _The Hobbit_ details the events of that adventure, but it also provides a description of what hobbits are at the beginning for the reader so we’re gonna just have to condense that here. 

A Hobbit is a humanlike creature, except about half as large, smaller than dwarves. The tallest hobbits ever were something like four foot six, but their heights generally range from two to four feet. They tend to be fat, brown haired, and they have thick hair on their feet. They do not tend to be magical, except to some it may seem so when they demonstrate their abilities in stealth. Their talent for being able to disappear is likely rooted in the fact that they like to avoid everyone and be out of the affairs of the Big People, which is what they call everyone else. 

The hobbits of this story live in a place called the Shire which is essentially a safe haven where only hobbits live, where there was peace and prosperity, and everyone dressed in bright colors and ate six meals a day. While the elves and humans were busy thinking about old lore and shit, the hobbits were basically constantly having parties and living their best lives and not interacting with Big Folk to the point that most people who lived outside the Shire almost never knew that hobbits existed, except maybe as an adorable made up race in children’s stories. The Shire is in the North East of Middle Earth in a larger country called Eriador, which is made up of mostly free city states since it hasn’t had a ruler in a thousand years when the area was once at war with the neighboring kingdom Angmar and its evil Witch King, who I promise is relevant to this story. Hobbits were said to have participated in this war, but most of them migrated to live in the Shire and never talk to anyone else ever again, although some stayed in the neighboring town of Bree. Bree and the Shire are basically the only places where hobbits can be found. 

Anyway because of that war with Angmar or something, the Shire was essentially set aside as a safe haven for these adorable little people, and some humans who lived in the area actively worked to protect it from outside intervention and this was kept in place for so long that the hobbits basically forgot that they were sheltered and they continued to live in pastoral paradise thinking that this was the whole world.

Hobbits like to live in holes in the ground, in these grand tunnel houses with big round doors called “Smials,” although these tend to be reserved for the big genteel families because they’re really fancy, cuz honestly, who wouldn’t want to live in a hobbit hole. Some hobbits live in houses, but they never have second floors because they like to be close to the ground at all times because they’re so small. Most hobbits feel the need to fill their houses or holes with massive families. There they like to obsessively study their genealogy because hobbit society, despite being idyllic, has a rigid class structure, and the most powerful families like to keep their bloodlines clean and shit, which is gross and garbage but go off. I’m not gonna ship any first fucking cousins though I’m gonna throw that off the bat straight out. These powerful families include the Tooks, the head of which is considered the Thain of the Shire, and the Brandybucks, who live nearby the Brandywine river where they are some of the only hobbits who like boats (most hobbits cannot swim and they hate water.) They also like to fill their houses with random useless shit which they call “mathoms,” because it’s hobbit custom to constantly give and regift gifts, to the point where instead of getting gifts on your birthday, you give the gifts instead. 

Hobbits also invented Weed. I know Tolkien most likely intended for it to be tobacco, but they call it weed, which makes it really funny in a modern context so for all intents and purposes, I’m just going to make the executive decision in my own damn fanfiction that it is, in fact, marijuana because why wouldn’t that be legal in this universe? Weed is the hobbits’ chief export to the outside world and their only major contribution to society outside of the Shire, aside from of course the contribution of the hobbits in this book who save the world. Anyway, Tolkien wrote a whole couple of pages about the history of hobbit weed which is kind of irrelevant to anyone except hobbits (Merry) who just love to talk about the “art of smoking weed’ like the stoners they are. 

Anyway, the Shire is divided up into what are called Farthings, and within these farthings are individual towns. Some of the farthings have their own titles such as Buckland or Tookland, named after the giant fancy families the Tooks and the Brandybucks. The Tooks tended to hold the office of Thain ever since one of them could ride a full sized horse and were technically the leaders of the Shire, but they also had a democratically elected Mayor, whose main job was to make speeches at banquets, of which there were many because food. Most hobbits were not literate because it was more important to learn to cook at a young age than it was to read and write, but those who could read and write did so a lot, and wrote so many letters to each other that the office of the Postmaster was considered of equal importance as the Thain and Mayor. The fact that they even have stuff like post offices makes them much more advanced than other races give them credit for, but that’s apparently the whole schtick of being a hobbit: always being underestimated.

Now, **On the Finding of the Ring:**

So in _The Hobbit_ , Bilbo Baggins was invited on a quest to recover some dwarven treasure from a dragon named Smaug (played by irl lizard man Benedict Cucumberbatch, forcing me to see scalie shit on tumblr that I didn’t want). It was successful but there was a battle of five armies in which five armies battled and a bunch of people died, but Bilbo had gotten hit in the head and didn’t participate in most of it which was fine because literally none of that is relevant to this story. What is relevant however, is that one day on the journey they were trying to get through some mountains, but the party was attacked by orcs (or was it goblins?) and Bilbo fell deep into the orc/goblin mines that he was near and got separated from the party.

While trying to find his way out of the darkness, by sheer coincidence Bilbo found a little ring on the ground and was like “well how about that, I shall take this.” About two seconds later he met Gollum, who was this awful little shitlord creature who lived at the bottom of this mountain and did nothing but eat any living thing that came his way and talk to his “Precious,” with a very annoying voice that fanboys have probably been trying to imitate since the 1950s. Bilbo, who otherwise would have been a tasty Gollum snack, tried to talk his way out of this with a battle of wits and challenged Gollum to a riddle contest. Gollum who, I guess, had been so isolated from society was like “yeah ok that’s reasonable for an attention starved shitlord like me” and they just swatted riddles back and forth until Bilbo started to get tired and wanted to end this nonsense as soon as possible.

So he asked Gollum the riddle, “What have I got in my pocket?” Which is not a riddle at all, it’s a total dick move, and Gollum obviously didn’t get it correct but he had agreed to the rules of the game or some shit so he let Bilbo go on his way. But of course, he wasn’t actually going to let Bilbo just get away. He was going to use “his Precious” to catch him and eat him, but in the moment he couldn’t seem to find it. He quickly made the connection that what Bilbo had in his pocket was in fact the Precious, the ring he had conveniently found earlier. As Gollum chased after him, Bilbo slipped on the ring by accident and lo and behold it made him invisible and Gollum could not find him. Bilbo thought for a moment that he should kill Gollum now that he had this advantage but he didn’t so he just walked away back to his party with the ring, which he proceeded to use like a hundred more times on the journey because he already had a high stealth stat due to him being a hobbit, and this nifty invisibility ring gave him like an extra plus twenty. Unfortunately, he had told his name to Gollum who vowed to get revenge on “Baggins” for the rest of his life.

Strangely, this was not the story that Bilbo told everyone. His version was that Gollum had given him the ring as a present for winning the game. A funky little enchanted invisibility token prize like you could win at the hobbit dentist. Gandalf the Wizard was the only one who thought, “hmmm I don’t think this is true, I’m a little worried about this ring and also about the fact that you think you need to lie about how you got it.” But Bilbo was like “don’t worry about it.” So nobody did for a while.

**Anywhomst**

I believe this is all the necessary background information, or at least based on the stuff that Tolkien provided in his prologue. Now you do not have to read _The Hobbit_ and instead you can read this next book _The Lord of the Rings_ , which is the second story in _The Red Book_ which has been fake translated from a made up language and now abridged further for your leisure here. Personally I think it’s kind of bullshit that I had to sit down and write this dumb chunk of exposition instead of sprinkling it throughout the book like a normal author, but then I wouldn’t have time to abridge the good shit, which we’re gonna get to now.


	2. The Big Fucking Birthday Bash

Every hobbit in Hobbiton was talking about Bilbo Baggins’ 111th birthday party. Bilbo was known for having killer fucking parties in general considering he was rich as fuck, ever since he came back from his treasure hunting adventure, but he was also the local crazy, wacky old guy who always talked about that treasure hunting adventure he did. Obviously everybody was going even if they hadn’t been invited, and 111 was a pretty impressive age for a hobbit, but yet for some reason Bilbo not only didn’t look like he was 111 fucking years old, but he was going around planning these extravagant parties walking and jumping around like he was still, like, 60 or something. People thought this was a little bit weird, but then again Bilbo had made such a reputation for himself for being a little bit weird that people found it endearing and the fact that he was so “well-preserved” was just another facet to his kooky old man antics.

Generally, Bilbo was very popular, especially among the common, middle class hobbits, since he was often extremely generous with his wealth, and he gave the best gifts and told the craziest stories and tipped his servers really well. He was basically Hobbit Santa Claus. Of course, not everyone liked Bilbo, in particular his petty asshole relatives the Sackville-Bagginses. Bilbo had no children of his own, or even many close friends, so when he went off on his adventure and didn’t come back for, like, a year or something, the Sackville-Bagginses had declared him dead and were overjoyed to finally inherit Bilbo’s beautiful hobbit hole, Bag End. Of course he ruined their plans when he came back and the only thing the Sackville-Bagginses were left with was the handful of silver spoons Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had filched as she was expunged from the premises.

Bilbo probably had realized that if should he ever die, emphasis on the if, Bag End would inevitably go to one of those guys who basically embodied the spirit of shitty in-laws except they unfortunately weren’t in-laws, they were actual relatives who sucked and were constantly, passive-aggressively disapproving of his mischievous, but otherwise unproblematic lifestyle. So, one day Bilbo went down to Buckland to visit some of his actually decent relatives.

“Hey, Frodo,” he said to his cousin, Frodo Baggins, “Isn’t your birthday September 22nd?”

“Uh, yeah. Same as you,” said Frodo.

“Excellent. For this reason, I am going to adopt you and make you the sole heir to my entire estate. You know, so we can combine birthday parties when we have them. That’s the only reason why.”

It was not the only reason why, but in order to be the spite lord he was, Bilbo couldn’t admit that such a generous gesture was spite motivated in order to spite his relatives even more. But it was still a pretty convenient arrangement, for Frodo who was an orphan after his parents had drowned in a grisly boating accident. Also Bilbo and Frodo ended up getting along very well. This was back when Frodo was still in his  _ tweens _ which is what hobbits call their twenties, which is basically teenage years for hobbits because they come of age at 33. Anyway that was twelve years ago and now at the big party in which Bilbo would turn eleventy-one, Frodo would simultaneously turn thirty-three himself.

Because everyone was talking about the party, all the other hobbits in the local taverns started to turn to some of the older hobbits in town to provide more exposition about the subject because it was getting really annoying just having to read all this background information in large chunks of paragraph.

“Hey, Gaffer Gamgee, what do you have to say about old Bilbo Baggins? You work as his gardener, right? You’ve got the inside scoop they say,” asked Old Noakes of Bywater.

“He’s always been a very nice and well-spoken gentlehobbit. Very friendly to me and my family. He recognizes my authority on growing potatoes which is always a mark of someone decent and of good judgement.” said the Gaffer, whose real name was Hamfast Gamgee, but people just called him the Gaffer because he was old now, but he was in fact considered the leading authority on growing potatoes by all in the neighborhood. “To be quite fair, though, I haven’t been working much as his gardener lately as I’ve been getting a little stiff in the joints. My youngest son, Sam, is doing most of the work these days. Sam is short for Samwise which means ‘dumbass’ because when I named him I thought I was gonna go five for five with idiot children when he was born, but then Mr. Bilbo taught him how to read which was very nice of him, but now I’ve got six idiot children and only the one named ‘Dumbass’ knows how to read which makes me feel a little stupid, myself. Anyway, that’s my only complaint against Mr. Bilbo.”

“And what about Frodo who lives with him?” asked Daddy Twofoot, “Isn’t he more than half Brandybuck, that weird family who lives near the haunted Old Forest and fucks around with boats as no hobbit should?”

“Okay, while I do agree with you on the boats front, because boats are scary as all hell,” said the Gaffer, “Mr. Frodo is a very decent young hobbit himself, and he does come from a good family.” He started to get into the hobbit genealogy because that’s many hobbits’ special interest, even if it seems irrelevant to the story beyond extra worldbuilding and an excuse for Mr. Tolkien to name more hobbits. “Mr. Frodo’s mother, Ms. Primula Brandybuck, was Mr. Bilbo’s first cousin on his mother’s side, and Mr. Frodo’s father, Mr. Drogo Baggins, was Mr. Bilbo’s second cousin on his father’s side, so Mr. Frodo is actually Mr. Bilbo’s first and second cousin once removed on both sides. Neither of Mr. Frodo’s parents ever did anything problematic until they drowned.”

“I heard his parents murdered each other. I heard the mother pushed the father in and he pulled her in after him,” interjected Sandyman, the miller.

“What the fuck, Sandyman,” said the Gaffer, who really didn’t like the miller at all, “Why are you like this? Literally nobody thinks that. It was a goddamn tragedy. Mr. Frodo was left an orphan having to grow up in Brandy Hall with the weird Brandybuck boat family who never had fewer than a hundred relatives in that place before Mr. Bilbo was saintly enough to adopt him and raise him on a boatless existence. It must have been terrible for him. I already have a difficult time living with my six idiot children.”

“Enough about stuff we already know!” said a visiting hobbit from the westfarthing, “Tell us about whether or not Bag End is full of treasures hidden in the walls left over from that dragon adventure he went on! I heard the place is full of tunnels filled to the brim with chests of gold and silver and jewels.”

“Hm, well, I haven’t heard that,” said the Gaffer. “I mean, I knew there was at least a few chests he came back with, but not enough to fill tunnels or line the walls or anything. Honestly I don’t really give a shit about what happened on that adventure. You might have to ask Sam about that cuz he’s into all those stories about dragons and elves and adventure. It’s a shame, he knows how to read but that’s all he’s reading about. I tell him, ‘Why can’t you read a book about potatoes or genealogy? Stuff that’s better for hobbits like me and you, not all this elf shit that can get you into trouble.’ You know elves and humans name everything like at least twice each? It’s so fucking annoying and complicated. That’s the kind of shit that turns you gay.”

“Honestly,” said Sandyman returning the conversation back to the treasure topic, “whether or not he had enough treasure to fill halls when he came back from the adventure doesn’t mean he hasn’t been adding to his treasure collection. He still has Big friends, like dwarves and that gigantic wizard, Gandalf, who are always going in and out of his house. I say while the party is going on, we just try and rob his fucking house.”

“Literally, what the fuck is your problem, Sandyman. Like what’s your damage? You know everyone in the area is invited to this party, right, and everyone who goes gets a very fancy present. You don’t need to rob his fucking house, my god.”

Despite Sandyman’s unpopular idea, Bilbo’s house remained unrobbed as he continued to make preparations for the party. A lot of hobbits noted strange carts driven by dwarves going in and out of Bag End, most likely leaving behind all sorts of foreign oddities. There was a rumor there was going to be fireworks this year, which was a very rare treat, and many people didn’t believe it until a weird little cart came trundling down the hobbit path full of odd shaped packages. Actually it wasn’t very little compared to hobbits because it was actually being pulled by a Big person wearing a pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a long grey beard. Think the most absolutely generic fucking wizard man, every fucking wizard stereotype rolled into one.

As you may have guessed, this generic wizard was Gandalf, who I guess is less generic and more the originator of all modern wizard iconography these days. Anyway, despite his previous reputation in Middle Earth as a sorcerer of untold power, Gandalf had actually started a small business designing firework displays and was bringing a cart full of rockets to shoot off at the big fucking birthday bash that was to begin in a few days. As his cart went down the street, small throngs of hobbit children ran out in hopes that this grandfatherly figure would forego his grumpy wizard exterior to reveal a fun loving heart and maybe shoot off some of his magic fireworks for them to see right there.

“Fuck off,” said Gandalf. “I’m not your grandfatherly figure and whoever told you I was nice was a fucking liar. You have to wait for the fireworks like everybody else.” And he left all those hobbit children behind in the dust as he rolled up into Bag End to meet up with Bilbo, his old smoking buddy. Their reunion was joyous and definitely involved bringing out the weed in a celebratory manner.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been such a grump to the little hobbitlings. You hobbits are the only ones in Middle Earth who really get me,” said Gandalf as he took a fat rip from his hobbit bong, which was still the same size as an ordinary human bong. “Are you still going through with  _ the plan? _ ”

“Oh yes,” Bilbo laughed through the smoke as he admired the sign he had just made which read “IF YOU COME HERE AND BOTHER ME UNINVITED I WILL HAVE MY GIGANTIC WIZARD FRIEND SMITE YOU. HE CAN DO THAT.” “Everything is in order. I can’t wait until I unveil the hilarious prank I have in store for everyone.”

“I feel like your ‘prank’ isn’t going to go over well and instead of laughing everyone will just feel spited. I’m so fucking proud of you.” Gandalf wiped away a small tear. “But really, though, make sure you stick to the  _ entire _ plan, even the parts that aren’t funny at other people’s expense.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bilbo. “I have been planning and looking forward to this for months, I don’t plan to leave anything out.”

To say the party was an Extravaganza ™ was a grotesque understatement. When it finally rolled around after about a week of everyone just pissing their pants with excitement and trying to get sneak peeks of the preparations without aggravating Bilbo enough that he may actually follow through with the threats on the sign, the party on September 22nd could barely even be classified as a party. It was more of a variety of entertainments all rolled into one like a gigantic carnival. Hobbit parties already go hard as hell but this was a whole other level. There were many tents full of food, drink, music, dances, games, more food, and did I also mention food? The gifts were also spectacular, which was a rarity for any birthday party, since hobbits get so many gifts from everyones’ birthdays it was the general custom that birthday gifts be decent but useless items that can be regifted later. These gifts however were actually great quality and things to be treasured, all being stuff made by dwarves, who are the master craftsmen of Middle Earth. And every hobbit in town and even the surrounding areas was there whether they were invited or not, and yet everyone was accounted for in terms of gifts. 

The main attraction however was the fireworks. Gandalf was a pretty powerful wizard and technically counted as a demigod since he was materialized by God himself, and all of that power was going into the fine art of fireworks that would put Katy Perry to shame. Instead of just halfheartedly exploding like any old penis could, these fireworks could form really intricate and stellar shapes that moved. One looked like a gigantic dragon swooping down and breathing more fireworks, and that was met with some awed but appreciative applause. Another one looked like a pot leaf and everyone lost their goddamn minds. 

“Their priorities are so galaxy brained,” said Gandalf fondly and without a hint of sarcasm. “I love these little guys so much.” And he shot off a firework which when exploded, instead of making a boom straight up said the word FUCK. Gandalf considered this one his finest work. This one also looked like a dragon, but it was like an actual dragon had materialized out of lights and then swooped down and breathed actual fire way too close to all of the watching hobbits, scaring the shit out of them. The fireworks definitely violated many a fire code but not a single part of Gandalf’s display was technically legal anyway so this was to be expected.

“And that’s the signal for dinner!” shouted Bilbo at all the now singed hobbits who upon hearing the word “dinner” immediately forgot their trauma and cheered like they all literally hadn’t been eating continuously since they arrived at the party.

Bilbo had set up a special family dinner table for his relatives and close friends to have a separate feast as everyone else gorged themselves on the copious amounts of food available amongst the rest of the party. Because he was 111 and Frodo was 33 today, he decided to add their ages together to get 144 and that was the amount of hobbits (plus Gandalf) who were invited to this exclusive dinner event. Bilbo did not pointedly leave out the Sackville-Baggins relations, although they were peeved by the idea that they were probably only invited to meet the quota of table guests so it would equal one gross. Lobelia was offended that Bilbo would be so uncouth to use such a gross term as gross to decide how many guests they could invite, but she and her husband Otho and son Lotho still accepted the invite anyway. She decided to take her feelings out on Frodo, the thief of her rightful inheritance, and when she caught him smiling, she made a movement that implied he had something stuck in his teeth even when he really didn’t in order to make him think that this whole time he was smiling stupidly with something stuck in his teeth. 

The food was, as expected, very wonderful, because in order to acquire it, Bilbo had to deplete the entire stocks of most of the stores, cellars, and warehouses for miles around like they were the toilet paper aisle at a Target in March of 2020. But everyone was kind of dreading the inevitable Bilbo after-dinner speech because in the past Bilbo usually took the opportunity to force his captive audience to listen to his “poetry” or more anecdotes from that adventure he had that everyone had already heard before. Once it was time for the speech, Bilbo clinked his fork against his glass, but everyone tried to ignore it and keep talking/eating so as to delay having to pretend like Bilbo’s lengthy poems were good. Bilbo promptly cleared his throat, looked at Gandalf who nodded, and then he went to clink his glass again but this time when he did, it made a sound like a gigantic reverberating gong which very much silenced everyone.

“My dear hobbits! I hope you are enjoying yourselves!” shouted Bilbo. The hobbits all responded with cries of “Yes!” or “No!” or just general noisemaking like banging on the table or shooting firecrackers or playing their little flutes and horns. This went on for like a full minute or two and was an absolute clusterfuck and a real impressive display of teamwork to continue the delay of the speech, as some literally started climbing up on the table and doing very vigorous hobbit dances. Bilbo sighed and ripped a horn out of a child’s hands, looked at Gandalf, and then blew three impossibly loud toots. Everyone was startled back into silence.

“I shall not keep you long,” continued Bilbo, and the applause was so riotous at that statement that Bilbo had to toot the loud horn one more time. “I have brought you all here for a purpose. I don’t know half of you half as well as I’d like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” People were quiet at this as they tried to figure out what the fuck this meant. “Anyway we are here to celebrate my one hundred and eleventh birthday! And also, it is the birthday of my heir and nephew Frodo, who comes of age and into his inheritance today.”

There was some perfunctory applause, and Frodo awkwardly waved, pointedly smiling with his mouth closed because he was worried he had something stuck in his teeth.

“Coming into his inheritance?” wondered Lobelia out loud.

“But now for the purpose of my speech!” Bilbo went on. Everyone clenched, fearing that now was the time for the endless poetry or song. “I will not sing an original song tonight,” said Bilbo and there was an audible sigh, “but I do have an ANNOUNCEMENT!” he shouted so loudly that the sigh inverted into a questionable gasp as everyone straightened again. 

“Even though I said I like some of you earlier and I truly am quite happy you could make it to this extravagant bash of mine, I finally have the opportunity to say what is really in my heart. Because this is the END and all you rowdy, goddamn fucking assholes are NEVER going to see me again! I am going. I am leaving. I am fucking all the way off RIGHT NOW. GOODBYE. And FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.” And then Bilbo vanished into thin air before people could register what was just said. There was a blinding flash of light, the guests all blinked, and there was silence for a moment as everyone realized that Bilbo was actually nowhere to be seen. Then there was an explosion of confusion as everyone started yelling and talking at once.

“Frodo!,” someone yelled, “Explain this!”

Frodo had actually been completely in on this vanishing act scheme, but he still let out the deepest sigh, shrugged, and continued to ignore everyone’s questions. Truly, Frodo thought that Bilbo was an absolute fucking legend for actually having the balls to tell everyone off like that, something Frodo had too much anxiety to do no matter how much they deserved it. They truly were big enough assholes that after a while many just laughed off the situation and continued to eat and drink because this was another wacky old man prank Bilbo decided to pull on them tonight. Something about the situation was kind of eating at Frodo, maybe it was because he discovered at that moment that he really dearly loved Bilbo and would be quite sad if he’d disappeared for good, maybe it was because he was really uncomfortable by the uncontrollable crowds, or maybe it was because Bilbo was fucking off and leaving him to deal with the uncontrollable crowds, a task he really did not want any part of. He decided to take a page from Bilbo’s book, and quietly fucked off as well.

So what had actually happened was that Bilbo had been quietly fingering his magical, little golden ring which he always kept in his pocket and during his speech at the critical moment, he slipped it on his finger, effectively making him invisible. He chuckled as he snuck off back to his hobbit hole completely unseen, never to be seen by any of the fuckers in Hobbiton ever again. Once he was safely indoors, he quickly changed his clothes and grabbed a whole bunch of prepacked bags and suitcases and was ready to fuck off forever like he always wanted. Then he took his magic ring out of his pocket, put it in a little envelope addressed to Frodo and put it on the mantelpiece. 

“Actually…” he said right after he had taken his hand off the envelope. He immediately put his hand back on it and stuffed it into his pocket. “Nobody needs to know.”

“Nobody needs to know what?” said Gandalf who was suddenly in his room.

“Oh fuck! Gandalf, didn’t see you there. By the way what was up with that blinding flash of light when I disappeared. It completely ruined my joke, now everyone is going to think you and I are some travelling magician’s act and I don’t have the power to actually turn invisible.”

“Well, you see, that was kind of the point. I’d rather have the hobbits think you and I are a magician’s act and you do not have a magic ring. Speaking of which–”

“Whatever, it’s all done now. I’ve already said my fuck you’s to everyone which cannot be unsaid, and I am leaving forever now. It is time for my permanent holiday. Everyone thinks that because I look like I’m sixty or seventy, I can still act like I’m not a crotchety old hobbit who desperately wants everyone to get off his lawn forever. I feel like,” he struggled for a moment to find a food based analogy. “I feel like butter that’s been scraped over too much bread. I have to get out of here and go to where there’s more butter, I mean, peace and quiet, where I can finish my autobiography and end it with something really fucking cool like ‘he lived happily ever after and nobody fucking bothered him even if he bothered them first.’”

“I know how you feel,” said Gandalf, a crotchety old man himself, even though he was still extremely doubtful that Bilbo would ever finish this book considering he had been trying to write it for sixty years and was constantly changing the stories inside it, specifically the story about how he got his magic invisibility ring. “So anyway, about that ring–”

“I do feel a little bad for Frodo, though,” continued Bilbo as he ignored Gandalf and started packing up yet another bundle of stuff in a handkerchief that had little weed leaves printed on it. “He’d probably rather come with me, or at least that’s what I think he thinks he wants. He’s still young, though, and hasn’t realized that I’m only leaving because I’m so fucking old that I’m so fucking sick of everyone and everything that I need to create a massive force field around myself. Frodo hasn’t gotten to that point yet, he doesn’t have to give up his life in serene pastoral paradise where everything is sized to his height.”

“I understand you’re leaving him everything,” said Gandalf, desperately trying to segue the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go.

“Yes, everything, except the couple of things I’m taking with me for my retirement. It’s funny. When I adopted him purely to spite the Sackville-Bagginses, I didn’t think I would like him so much. He’s so responsible and so respectful of my personal boundaries and that’s so rare among hobbits these days–”

“And the ‘everything’ you are leaving him included your ring, right, as you agreed earlier?” Gandalf interrupted because this was important. “The ring is not one of those things that you’re taking with you.”

“Um,” stammered Bilbo, reassuringly. “Yes, I suppose I am, giving it to him. It’s in an envelope on the mantelpiece.”

“Is it, though?” said Gandalf, who had been standing faced towards the mantelpiece throughout this conversation and knew for a fact it was not there. “Is it in an envelope on the mantelpiece, or is it still sitting in your pocket?”

Bilbo instinctively moved his hand toward the pocket where the ring was, confirming Gandalf’s suspicions. He sighed, “Yes. It is here in my pocket, but honestly, why shouldn’t it be? Why do I have to give it away? Why are you so obsessed with my ring?” His voice was suddenly surprisingly biting and sharp.

“I’ll have you know,” started Gandalf, trying to sound calm, “that I am simply professionally interested in this ring. It might be a cursed object but I’m not sure–”

“Professionally interested, my ass! Being a kooky wizard in a pointy hat isn’t a real job! You don’t need to get involved with what I do with my own things that are mine and I own.”

“Being a wizard actually  _ is  _ a profession, my boss is God, himself–” Gandalf realized he couldn’t get offended about this because that would just aggravate the already tense situation. “Look, Bilbo, you just need to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down when you literally started this argument. The ring is mine, you understand me. It’s mine. My own. My Precious.”

“Oh mother of fuck,” whispered Gandalf under his breath as he heard the sound of every fanboy’s impression of the my precious phrase play in his head all at once. “Look, Bilbo, we have been smoking buddies for a long time now, and I have never once asked anything from you,” he lied. “Just, do this one thing for me, no, for  _ you _ , and just let the ring go.”

“Just fucking say you want my Precious for yourself, you liar! But you will not get it!” cried Bilbo and his hands moved to grab the hilt of his tiny, hobbit sword.

“Okay, that’s it, motherfucker, you wanna fight?” said Gandalf as he straightened himself as much as he could in the tiny hobbit house. “You wanna fight Gandalf the Grey, the immortal wizard demigod, over some jewelry? Cuz we can go right now and I’ll fuck you the fuck up.” There was a rush of wind, some trick of the light, and Gandalf’s voice somehow boomed with the threat of Hell on Earth, and as Bilbo looked up, it looked like Gandalf was a million feet tall. His shadow filled the entire room, and his eyes gleamed with unspeakable power. Bilbo who was a solid three foot two had no doubt in that moment that Gandalf could and would absolutely fuck him up. “I’m not known to hesitate, but I’m doing so now because you are my friend. I am not trying to rob you or fuck you up on purpose, I am trying to help you. How could I live in this plane of existence if I lost my smoking buddy and provider of the best kush in the universe if he turned into a little shitlord like Gollum who only gave a shit about his precious?”

The compliment to Bilbo’s famous kush was what did it in the end, but also the threat of losing all of his organs if he pressed Gandalf any further. “I’m sorry, Gandalf. I don’t want to jeopardize our entire weed-based relationship over this. I don’t know what’s going on with me, it’s like I always need to be thinking about this ring, and I’m always thinking about putting it on. It kind of feels like it’s an eye that’s always watching me, like I always need it in my pocket or else I can’t rest. I guess it is going to be a little bit of a relief to not have those feelings anymore. But also–”

“We don’t need to dwell on the ‘but also.’ I think it will be the most healthy decision for you if you give it away and you can think of other things and feel like you’re a more proportionate dab of butter for the bread that is your life. You give it to Frodo like all the rest, and I’ll make sure that he’ll be fine and won’t experience any of the negative side effects of this ring at all.” Gandalf placed a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. Bilbo smiled, ruefully, but they made an understanding eye contact that only a friendship forged in a century of smoking weed together can achieve. 

“You’re right. I will trust you. I’ll give it to Frodo,” Bilbo said with a great deal of difficulty. Suddenly he was snapped out of his reverie. “Oh shit! How long have we been talking about this? What if somebody finds me here and I’ll have to say goodbye a second time, after I already said fuck you to everybody. It’s gonna be so awkward! I have to go, now!” Bilbo hastened to grab his bags and started to wander out the door.

“Bilbo, I think you’re forgetting something.” Gandalf stood up and gestured to his waist. “Namely, the cursed object in your pocket.”

“Oh! Right!” laughed Bilbo as he took out the envelope. “That’s so funny, we were just spending this whole conversation talking about it and then I forgot about it again! That’s so silly of me. You know this envelope also includes my will and all the other important documents that would secure Frodo in his inheritance and if I had taken it with me it would have been disastrous. Ha ha...ha…” He faltered as he stared at the envelope in his now trembling hands. Gandalf sighed, moved over to Bilbo and quickly karate chopped his arms causing Bilbo to drop the envelope to the floor. They shared a look just before Bilbo went to pick it up but Gandalf stopped him and swooped in to grab the envelope gingerly with two fingers, placing it on a high shelf where Bilbo could not reach. A terrifying spasm of anger passed over Bilbo’s face but only for a second, and suddenly he was happy and relieved like your average chumby old hobbit.

“Well there we go. That’s that. It’s time for me to finally fuck off forever!” He grabbed his bags and turned to the door. Upon opening it, he breathed deeply. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“And I’m happy for you,” said Gandalf, who meant it. “Good luck.”

“Thank you. Goodbye, Gandalf, for now, because you are one of the few people on this earth who I will allow to bother me when I’m into my retirement.” He took one last look at his cozy little hobbit hole, and then bounded off down a secluded road in the opposite direction from the gigantic birthday bash celebrations, singing a jaunty little tune to himself, which I could write out here but I won’t because I’m not Tolkien who thinks it’s relevant to put entire songs in this book. Don’t worry, though, we will get there and I’ll satisfy his need to fill up pages with nothing but inane song lyrics about troll assholes (yes that is a real thing that’s coming.)

Gandalf watched Bilbo disappear into the night before he went back inside to sit on the tiny furniture and think deeply.

“Bilbo?” said a voice a few minutes later. It was Frodo who had finally escaped from the party. 

“He’s gone.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “So he finally up and did it. He’d talked about it for so long I was beginning to think, even hope, that it was all just a joke and he was just in his ‘Get off my lawn’ phase of life. I wish I came sooner so I could say goodbye.”

“Yeah, but I think it was really fitting for him, though, to fuck off into the night without saying a goddamn word to anyone, even to those he cared about.”

“I guess you’re right,” sighed Frodo as he looked out the window. “The absolute legend. I’m still uneasy about it, though. I just can’t get rid of that feeling that he’s pushed more baggage onto me than I’m ready to handle.”

“Hey! Speaking of unfortunate baggage that Bilbo’s pushed on you” said Gandalf as he rose from his tiny seat, “congratulations, you are now the master of Bag End and also the new protagonist of this story.” He pointed to the envelope on the high shelf. “There’s all the papers to prove it. Also a ring, but don’t touch that until I come back tomorrow.”

“Wait, hold on,” Frodo gasped, “are you telling me that Bilbo has left me his magic invisibility ring that he used to avoid obnoxious relatives? That was his favorite thing in the world!” He sniffed and moved toward the shelf. “I guess this is his way of saying that I, too, may use this to avoid my obnoxious relatives.”

“I told you, don’t fucking touch it. If you do, I will kill you.” Gandalf roared as he immediately put himself between Frodo and the shelf with enough power to actually make good on this threat. Gandalf wasn’t joking when he said he wasn’t known to hesitate. Frodo looked up at the gigantic wizard, terrified. “Sorry, I just– it’s been a long day. I’m very tired. Look, just, don’t use it, don’t tell anyone about it, don’t think about it. I’ll explain later. I’m going to bed.” And then he left without another word, leaving Frodo with a whole realm of problems yet unfathomable to him.

The troubles began that very night as it was Frodo’s unfortunate responsibility to clear up the remaining guests from the party. Of course, nobody was satisfied with Frodo not originally explaining Bilbo’s disappearance, and they would remain so as Frodo literally could not tell them anything other than what everyone already knew, that Bilbo had left, although to what extent was still debatable. Fortunately Bilbo had set up an arrangement that the local gardeners would roll away all of the drunkards who wouldn’t leave on time in wheelbarrows.

The next morning, however, as all of the tents and tables and pavilions were being cleared away, a whole bunch of still unsatisfied hobbits showed up at Frodo’s doorstep demanding answers. Frodo was already exhausted.

“Mr. Bilbo Baggins has gone away; as far as I know, for good,” was all he could say and he repeated this message about fifty times, even when the same people asked the question a second time but just a little bit louder. 

It also fell upon Frodo to give away all of Bilbo’s passive-aggressive goodbye gifts. Bilbo had left a whole pile of small packages or furniture meant to be given away. An umbrella for the guy who kept stealing his umbrellas, a trash can for the relative who wrote too many letters, a pen and bottle of ink for the relative who never answered letters, an empty bookcase for the guy who kept borrowing Bilbo’s books and never returning them. Yes all of these were in the book, I didn’t make any of these up to be funny. Even Lobelia Sackville-Baggins received a case of silver spoons, immediately recognizing that this was a dig on the fact that Bilbo long suspected her of stealing his spoons while he was away. She still took the spoons, though. To be fair, pretty much everyone Bilbo ever really knew personally got a gift with a note attached and not everyone’s gifts were passive aggressive, but let’s face it the majority of them really were. 

Unfortunately, information spread quickly that Bilbo had left for good and was giving away essentially his entire property so people started flocking over to Bag End to fucking loot the goddamn house. It was absolute fucking chaos. Hobbits showed up with wheelbarrows, blocking the entire road to Bag End, hoping to fill it with free furniture or even better all of the gold and jewels that were rumored to be hidden in the walls. On top of dealing with the recipients of particularly passive-aggressive gifts, Frodo had to constantly politely tell everyone that he did in fact still live here and this was in fact his house without losing his fucking mind, which he was very close to doing. He had teamed up with his best friend and cousin Merry Brandybuck to somehow control this nonsense. It was almost not working. They had to yoink shit that had been yoinked, struggling to recover the kitchen appliances that were going out the door without Bilbo’s express permission, having to forcibly remove children who arrived with hammers who were trying to make holes in the fucking walls to excavate the treasure, and having to mediate arguments (and occasionally brawls) between people who were trying to steal each others’ gifts.

“It’s a free for all! I’m glad we went through with my plan!” yelled Sandyman the miller as he tried to make away with Frodo’s toaster.

“No. No. No it isn’t. Please,” begged Frodo, “I don’t know who you are. Please get out of my house.” Frodo wrestled the toaster out Sandyman’s hands as he was forcibly led away. “Merry, I need a minute to go fucking cry. Can you hold down the fort for a while?”

“Absolutely.” Frodo gave Merry a thank you sigh and then went into his study, locked the door, and then proceeded to rest his head on his desk and stare into the void, a position which he held without moving for at least fifteen minutes.

The Sackville-Bagginses arrived shortly after. Otho loudly demanded to see Frodo, angry to find Merry in charge.

“Who’s Frodo?” attempted Merry politely.

“Nice fucking try you piece of ship, boat boy, now where is he?”

“He’s resting, can you give him a minute?”

“Absolutely not,” and Otho and Lobelia barrelled into the study to find Frodo still slumped forward with his face on his desk.

“Oh no. He died. Guess you can’t talk to him,” Merry tried this time, but Frodo had already gotten up to face the shitstorm ahead of him. He put on his best polite face and thought about what he wouldn’t give to use Bilbo’s magic invisibility ring right now to get out of this.

Otho and Lobelia started attempting to haggle with Frodo about how they could acquire his house (of course they asked for a friends and family discount). Eventually Frodo showed him the will which was extremely clear and correct, and had gone through the ridiculously overcomplicated hoops of hobbit bureaucracy. The Sackville-Bagginses had been successfully spited.

“I cannot fucking believe,” said Otho, “that we waited sixty years for that old motherfucker to die, only for him to leave us nothing but spoons! Lobelia, we’ve been spited!”

“Agghhhh!” shrieked Lobelia as Otho snapped his fingers under Frodo’s nose and waggled his fingers in some sort of hexing motion. “You’re not going to get away with this you...you…” Lobelia searched for a suitable burn. “You Brandybuck!” And she huffed away presumably to join the mob and attempt to steal a whole bunch of furniture.

“Was that, like, supposed to be an insult?” asked Merry Brandybuck once the storm had passed.

“Apparently,” Frodo shrugged. “Wait, did you try to fucking tell them I was dead?”

Eventually there was a small lull in the chaos which allowed Merry and Frodo to successfully empty the house of intruders. Once they had literally fought one of the hobbits who was attempting to break down the walls, they closed the door and vowed not to open it again for a minimum of four hundred and twenty minutes.

“We’re gonna fucking barricade this door. We can’t let anybody in under any goddamn circumstances. I don’t care if they come in with a fucking battering ram named Grond. I can’t do it anymore, Merry. I’m not fucking strong enough.” Frodo slumped into an armchair.

“I know this and I love you,” said Merry as he pushed the chair Frodo was sitting on in front of the door to begin a barricade. “I promise I’ll come up with better excuses for next time,” and then he went off to find more barricade furniture. Just then there was a knock on the door. Merry and Frodo froze.

“If we don’t move or make any noise, maybe they’ll go away,” said Frodo quietly. “Whoever it is they can wait.” The knock repeated, louder this time. The air was tense as Merry and Frodo literally held their breath. Then they heard footsteps leaving the door and they each let out a sigh.

“I swear to fucking god, Frodo, if you don’t let me in I’m gonna fucking destroy your door like in the three goddamn little pigs!” boomed the voice of Gandalf who very suddenly appeared in the window, scaring the shit out the hobbits.

“Uh, um, Frodo can’t come to the door now, he’s uh, dead–” squealed Merry.

“No, Merry, it’s Gandalf we have to let him in because he actually can kill us,” cried Frodo as he got out of his chair and started moving it away from the door. “I’m so sorry Gandalf,” he said as he let Gandalf inside. “I thought you were Lobelia come back with a better insult.”

“Oh, well I guess that’s understandable then. I forgive you,” said Gandalf, sitting down. He gave a look to Merry which two potheads can immediately understand as a “go get the weed” look. Merry diligently left to go get the weed.

“It was so fucking awful, Gandalf. It’s like nobody knows how to chill out when it comes to the possibility of free stuff. I seriously considered putting on Bilbo’s magical escape-the-relatives invisibility ring.”

“But you didn’t though,” said Gandalf with a smile, “Cuz you know if you did I would have to kill you.”

“And I knew this so I didn’t,” Frodo smiled back but uncomfortably.

“I always knew you were a good boy, Frodo. I was never going to actually kill you over it, just needed to make sure you wouldn’t immediately succumb to using it while I was away for five minutes. But seriously, I do need you to be careful with that ring. What do you know about it?”

“Well, I know that it exists, it makes you turn invisible, and Bilbo most often used it to avoid having to talk to people he didn’t want to. He told me how he got it, and that is the extent of the information I have.”

“Which version of the story did he tell you, I wonder.”

“Well, there weren’t very many secrets between us. Somewhere along the line he told me that I was one of maybe three people he still enjoyed talking to, so he told me the version of the story that isn’t common knowledge, which to me seems the most truthful version. Asking ‘what have I got in my pocket’ as a riddle seems just like the kind of dick move Bilbo would pull.” Frodo sighed, “The absolute legend.”

“Yeah, I always thought it was pretty fucky that you kind of had to press him for the truth about how he got it, but then again I think ring business in general is extremely fucky. Magic rings are not to be taken lightly, there was only like twenty of them ever made in the world, and it’s more than likely this isn’t just a little doodad that you can use to vanish from your obnoxious relatives. It’s probably extremely dangerous and or cursed.”

“Wait, I don’t understand–”

“Neither do I. But look, just don’t worry about it until I get back to you with the facts about this. As long as you don’t use it or draw attention to it, you’ll be fine. You hobbits are way sturdier than most Big Folk would give you credit for. I mean, last night I literally shot real fire at you guys and all it took was the word ‘dinner’ to un-traumatize everyone. Speaking of which,” Gandalf stood up. “After that specific stunt with the fireworks, there appears to be a warrant out for my arrest for ‘endangering the public safety.’ Personally I think that’s bullshit, but I don’t really want to go to hobbit jail. Not that I couldn’t completely obliterate the entire jail complex and escape with my wizard powers, but it’s kind of a dignity thing of having all you little potheads put me in your tiny jail with tiny handcuffs like I’m in a game of Monopoly. Anyway, this means that I’ll be fucking off as well, effective immediately.”

“What already? Merry hasn’t even come back with the weed, yet!” cried Frodo. “I was kind of banking on you helping me out during this chaos for the next week.”

“Yeah, well, apparently there’s some rumors going around that you and I are in some conspiracy to disappear Bilbo and steal all his wealth, so it’s probably in your best interest as well that I leave to debunk that nonsense.”

“Ughhh, I hate people,” Frodo groaned as he slumped back into his armchair.

“Yeah, me too. I can see why Bilbo liked you. Don’t use that ring though.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Swear to me on your human sized hobbit bong that you won’t use it.”

“I swear to you on my hobbit bong.”

“Good,” Gandalf headed towards the door. “I’ve said my piece. I’ll be back periodically to check up on you, just to make sure you aren’t actually harboring a cursed object in your house.”

“Good, cuz that would be really bad if that were true.”

“You’re right! It would be absolutely disastrous! Let’s hope it isn’t!” Gandalf left the house on that jovial note just as Merry came back with the weed and his human sized hobbit bong.

“Gandalf, are you leaving before we can smoke all this?” asked Merry.

“Unfortunately yes, Merry, but he says that he’ll be back soon, right, Gandalf?” Frodo looked pleadingly at Gandalf with his big anime eyes.

“Yes, yes, very soon. Take care of yourself! Goodbye!”

Gandalf literally never came back after that for seventeen years.


	3. Gandalf Explains the Plot

Frodo was very surprised to say the least when he opened his door to find Gandalf.

“Told you I’d be back,” said Gandalf as he attempted to walk uninvited into Frodo’s house. Frodo blocked the door determined to at least acknowledge the absurd time skip that hung in the air.

“It’s literally been seventeen years, Gandalf. Like, is this one of those things where you’re immortal and you forgot that time passes differently for people who aren’t wizards?”

“No, absolutely not, I’m not just some fucking Elf twink who’s main character trait is just a gimmick about how superior he is to mortals. I know how time works. I experience time,” he said unconvincingly. He took a look up and down at Frodo. “Not that the seventeen years really made a difference for you anyway.” 

This wasn’t actually an insult. Frodo was getting to be about middle aged, but he still looked exactly as youthful as he had when he came of age at his and Bilbo’s birthday party seventeen years ago, a time skip that deserves to continue to be acknowledged. It wasn’t like Frodo hadn’t heard other hobbits complain about this behind his back literally all the time, so he knew what Gandalf was talking about. 

“Anyway,” started Gandalf before Frodo could respond, “I’ve learned some things over the last seventeen years, and I think today is the day that I come to my conclusion. And that is that  _ you _ ,” he pointed at Frodo’s tiny, eternally youthful chest, “You are  _ so _ fucked, my friend.”

“What? I’m fucked? I’m your friend?!” cried Frodo. 

Gandalf shrugged and failed to elaborate. 

“Can you provide, like, some explanation, please?”

“Well, that is what I came here to do, so don’t worry. I mean, actually do worry because things are probably very, very bad. But we can’t talk about this here.” Gandalf’s eyes flicked across the garden to where Sam Gamgee was trimming the bushes beneath the windows, desperately trying to look uninterested in the unprecedented return of the Cranky Illegal Firework Wizard. “Also,” continued Gandalf, “we can’t talk about this until we’ve smoked a ton of weed, cuz trust me, I think we’re going to need a lot.”

Gandalf and Frodo smoked weed in silence for a while in Frodo’s living room. Fortunately, Frodo lived alone much like Bilbo did, so there was no one else to be bothered by the immense amount of weed Gandalf required in this moment. Over these past years, Frodo had been trying to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Bilbo’s life path, since Bilbo was on his way to becoming a true cryptid legend in hobbit society. His vanishing incident at the party was never forgotten and people kept talking about it throughout years, and eventually, even beyond the confines of Frodo’s lifetime, the story would get twisted so much that Bilbo, or Mad Baggins as he would be called, would basically become the Shire’s Santa Claus legend. Once a year at a big celebration, Mad Baggins gives everyone amazing gifts before fucking off into the ether like some sort of benevolent trickster god. It was Frodo’s life’s dream to one day be able to achieve this level of cryptid status as well.

For now, though, Frodo was growing more and more concerned about what Gandalf was going to tell him, because Gandalf was kind of going off the rails today with the weed. Gandalf regularly smoked a lot of weed already, but this time he was smoking so much more than what Frodo would classify a pleasant high, to the point where Gandalf kept going even after Frodo decided that he’d had enough. Eventually, this primordial weed man reached a point where he just stared into possibly a separate dimension and a silence hung in the air thicker than all the weed smoke, the only sound being the gentle clipping of garden shears outside the window.

Frodo decided he needed to break the tension now. Gandalf certainly looked high enough that he could start talking now. “So, um,” started Frodo, “you wanna tell me what you were talking about earlier? About why I’m fucked?”

Gandalf exhaled a puff of smoke that formed itself into the words “Here we fucking go…”

“Alright,” he sighed, “I just want to preface this with that there’s still a 0.01 percent chance that I’m wrong and everything’s fine. I mean, I’m almost extremely positive that it isn’t, but I just need one last piece of evidence to officially prove me right, and there’s still that chance you might be in the clear.”

“Oh okay, this is very reassuring,” said Frodo who was already regretting smoking all that weed because he was now more paranoid than relaxed. Gandalf puffed out a plain, non-magical smoke ring. Frodo gestured to it, “I assume this is about the ring then?”

“Whoa, yeah,” said Gandalf, impressed. “You haven’t been using it, have you?”

“No, no I haven’t. I usually just leave it on the chain Bilbo kept it on. Bilbo mentioned in his letter that it warps really easily so it needs to be looked after pretty frequently.”

“Can I see it?”

Frodo nodded, and pulled the ring out of his pocket. Somehow, though, it seemed a little heavier than usual, like it was difficult to hand it over to Gandalf. 

“Can you see any markings on it?” asked Gandalf.

“Uh, no.” The ring was just a plain golden band. Frodo overcame the weird impulse to not hand it over and handed it over.

“Okay, how about now?” said Gandalf, and he immediately tossed the ring into the burning fireplace.

“What the fuck?!” screamed Frodo as he raced to grab the fireplace tongs. 

“Oh my fucking god, chill out.” Gandalf took the tongs from Frodo. “What do you think the point of us smoking all that weed was for? So you could chill out and not overreact to things that don’t matter. It’s a hundred percent fine. It’s actually not even hot.” He reached in with the tongs after a moment and pulled the ring back out, then tossed it at Frodo who flinched before realizing as he caught the ring that Gandalf was right. The ring was cool, like it hadn’t literally just been in fire.

“Now,” continued Gandalf, “is there any sort of message or something on this ring?”

Looking closely, Frodo could see the ring actually had some fine markings on it which glowed like they’d been written with a pen of fire. “Well now that you mention it, there appears to be some sort of illegible demonic inscription written in fire on it.” Frodo looked up at Gandalf who was walking back to the chair where he had his wizard bong, which was a proportionately scaled up version of human sized hobbit bongs, a luxury commodity. “What...what does…?”

“I’ll tell you what it says,” sighed Gandalf. “I can read and speak forbidden demonic languages. You know, because I know everything.” He sat down and took an immensely fat rip before continuing on. “It says:

_ One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, _

_ One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. _

There was an uncomfortable silence as Gandalf took another hit. “Anyway, my suspicions have been confirmed. You’re really fucking fucked.”

“W… why?”

“You see, I always thought it was really fucking tacky to have the One Ring essentially wear a label that just says ‘this is the One Ring’ on it like a nametag. Like, the hubris. This is part of why I make sure that every location I visit I give people a different name, so people don’t get cocky thinking they know me. But I digress, Frodo, because that’s not just some fucky little tool you just use to hide from your piece of shit hobbit relatives. That’s the One Ring, you know, the one that can rule them all. And it’s probably the single most powerful object in existence right now.”

Frodo stared at Gandalf with his mouth agape. Then he stared back at the Ring, which needs to be capitalized now. Then he looked back to Gandalf.

“I expect you have some questions,” said Gandalf.

“Yeah!” said Frodo, loudly. “What the _ fuck _ ? And also, what? And why? How? Where, when, and I guess also who–”

“I will answer only the ones of those that I feel like, but I guess we’ll just have to start at the very beginning, which, as you might have heard, is what they call a very good place to start.”

“So,” he began, “way, way the fuck back, the Elven-smiths got together and made the Great Rings, or the Rings of Power, which are like, these really great and powerful rings that like, essentially make you protect and control the world and give you immense power or some shit. There’s a little song about it, but I’m not going to recite the thing to you because it’s best to hear it in Cate Blanchett’s voice which I don’t have right now, but basically, they gave these Rings to representatives for the world’s races. Three for the Elves, seven for the Dwarves, and nine for the Humans.”

“What about hobbits?”

“You guys didn’t get any because nobody gives a shit about hobbits except for me apparently. Either they just fucking forgot about you guys or they figured you have weed so that’s basically good enough. But anyway, then the evil Dark Lord Sauron made himself another Ring that’s a master Ring that can control all the other nineteen Rings of Power, making him essentially fucking invincible and the most powerful being in the world.”

“Wait, how could anyone just like, make a better Ring of Power if these were already some of the most powerful objects in the world? And is Sauron an Elf or, like, what is he?”

“No, he’s a Maia– he’s a fucking– look it’s not fucking important. He’s like an immortal wizard person like me except he’s not a wizard and this is too fucking complicated, just read another book about this if you give a shit. The point is, he was a Dark Lord and had the power to make the Ring and he, like, poured his life essence into making it or some shit, like a horcrux. And once he started using this Ring he was able to control all the other ones and for a while he got really powerful and had significant dominion over parts of Middle Earth.”

“Okay,” said Frodo rubbing his forehead. “So basically, whenever Bilbo put on this ring, he didn’t just become invisible, he also had the power to control all the other nineteen Rings of Power and also the world apparently?”

“No!” Gandalf yelled like John Mulaney in the Delta Airlines skit. “No, if you’re a mortal you can’t use any of the Great Rings to their full potential unless you’re super overleveled and beefed. And while I love the guy, Bilbo was not there yet. When he wore it, it just made him invisible, except it didn’t really make him invisible, a better way to describe it is that he went to a separate plane of existence where the wraiths live, and if he had used it way too much he would’ve faded and stayed there permanently because that’s what happens to mortals who eventually can’t handle the power of the ring. That’s what happened to all the nine humans who got their Rings from back then and they became Sauron’s invisible eternal servants. They still are, cuz the Rings do make you immortal if you aren’t, the catch being that you become mindless slaves to the Ring for the rest of time.”

“Holy shit, how long have you known this? Is Bilbo okay?! Has he or is he going to become a mindless, invisible slave??” Aside from Frodo genuinely caring about Bilbo’s well being, it would also be pretty embarrassing, since over the past seventeen years he’d still held an annual birthday party for Bilbo because he insisted he wasn’t dead and still in good health.

“Bilbo’s fine, don’t worry. Hobbits have good constitution anyway, and also the fact that he only ever really used the One Ring to be an introvert instead of, you know, world domination I think also factored into it. It was pretty good that he gave it away when he did, though, because he was starting to feel the effects. He was talking about how he was constantly thinking about it more often, and how he was starting to feel like too little butter on too much bread, like he was getting stretched beyond his years. And then the last time we talked after the party he said some concerning things to me, so that’s why I stepped in and made him give it to you and make it your problem. Which I do feel a little bad about, by the way, and I am sorry, but you know, he did feel better right away, and part of the reason why Bilbo adopted you was basically so he could have someone to throw under the bus while he ran away from his problems.”

“I don’t think– that’s not–” Frodo sighed. “How the fuck did he end up with  _ the _ one master Ring of Power, though? Why doesn’t Sauron still have it?”

“Well, first of all, if Sauron still had the Ring, you wouldn’t be living in your hobbit pastoral paradise because the entire world would just be a fucking cesspool of evil, like, every fucking miserable feeling you could possibly feel would take, like, physical form in everything you see and experience like a rotting placenta birthed straight out of the anus of Satan himself. Sauron lost the Ring a few thousand years ago in a war against all the Humans and the Elves who hadn’t already become his slaves. That’s a long fucking story which I’m not going to tell you, but basically, all you need to know is that a Human prince named Isildur cut off the hand that Sauron was wearing the Ring on and defeated him. Isildur then said ‘I’ll just fucking take that’ about the Ring, and then in record time his party got hijacked by orcs. Isildur jumped into a river to escape, but the Ring fell off his hand and he got shot and died and the Ring sunk down to the bottom of the river where it stayed for like another thousand years. Meanwhile, everyone else just assumed that Isildur wasn’t a fucking  _ idiot _ and a  _ moron _ and he’d destroyed the Ring immediately like he was  _ supposed  _ to, because such a powerful object that can only be used by one person at a time shouldn’t fucking exist and people pretty much forgot about it.

“But over these last seventeen years, I have researched and pieced the rest of the story together. What happened was, there was an early hobbit society that lived by that river. And one day there were these two hobbits named Sméagol and Déagol and they were out fishing, and Déagol had caught this fish but since he was a hobbit and small, the fish was big enough to pull him overboard and into the water. While he was underwater he saw something gold so he swam down and picked it up and it was the Ring. And Sméagol was like, ‘Wow, what’s that, Déagol, my love?’”

“Oh rad, were they gay?” asked Frodo.

“Whether or not they were it doesn’t really matter. Their ship is pretty problematic anyway and you’ll see why.” Gandalf took another puff of smoke. “So then once Sméagol saw the Ring he was like ‘I think I should have that ring because it’s my birthday,’ and Déagol was like ‘No,’ so Sméagol murdered him.”

“Oh,” said Frodo. “So Sméagol overreacted to the fact that his boyfriend didn’t want to do a birthday proposal?”

“No, you idiot, it’s because the One Ring consumes your mind and it makes you murder people. Honestly, you’re really going to regret shipping Sméagol with anyone in a bit because he was a real piece of shit. Once he hid the body and went back to his life, he figured out the Ring could turn him invisible. He started using it all the time to sneak around and find out everyone’s secrets so he could blackmail them, and eventually his entire hobbit community collectively decided that he was a shitstain on the underwear of their life and refused to be beholden to him, so he got disowned by his family and they kicked him out of their town and he became a sniveling shitlord thief who was always muttering to himself and making gurgling sounds. That’s when people started calling him  _ Gollum _ .”

“Wait, hold on. Gollum? _ Gollum?!”  _ Frodo yelled. “The weird frog man from that cave Bilbo went to has an  _ origin story _ ?”

“Yup. Eventually he ended up at the bottom of the mountains where he would never have to see the sun again, which he had come to hate because it looked like the Ring which he had also come to hate, but also love because it was also himself now. And he stayed there for like six hundred years or something, and that’s why he looks like a frog, because that’s what happens to hobbits who live for six hundred miserable years under a mountain, just in case you were thinking about ever doing that.”

This was not the kind of cryptid Frodo aspired to be. He rubbed his temples. “How the fuck did you figure all of this out?”

“First of all,” said Gandalf, “I don’t need to explain shit to you about how I go about my life and what I fucking do with my time. I found Gollum, which was hard e-fucking-nough because he had left the cave after Bilbo took the Ring so he could go look for it. I had to hire my friend who tracks things to find him and even that didn’t really help because Gollum is a slippery motherfucker because he turned into a little frog man without any of the charm of frogs. But then, eventually when we did catch him, the next fucking issue was piecing together his story which was  _ excruciating _ , because he fucking talks like this:” 

Gandalf cleared his throat before performing his Gollum impression. “‘What had it got in its pocketses? It wouldn’t say, no precious. Not a fair question, it broke the rules, it did. We ought to have squeezed it, yes precious, and we will precious. And the Precious! Nyuh nyuh,’” Gandalf coughed, then drank the bong water to soothe his throat. “Anyway, I had to sit there and listen to his borderline unintelligible speech and endless tangents about the same goddamn things. Not to mention he kept twisting the truth, saying he got the Ring as a birthday present or some shit. It was possibly the most aggravating task I have had to experience and part of why it has been seventeen years, but I did it. I think I have enough of the fucking story that’s relevant and I honestly don’t think I could take anymore. But yeah, basically, we found out he has an origin story, and we also found out that at some point after he left his cave he went to Mordor and told Sauron about the Ring and how someone named “Baggins” from the Shire has it now.”

“What the fuck?!” Frodo jumped out of his seat. “That motherfucker, I do feel stupid now. He doesn’t deserve to be gay, he deserves to be dead!”

“Eh,” shrugged Gandalf, “Maybe we won’t go there. He could still get a redemption arc.”

“Gandalf, you do not strike me as the kind of person who would believe in redemption arcs, if I may be frank.”

“Maybe so. But still, if I didn’t think that, I definitely would have killed him sooner, and then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess. I think part of it is that despite everything, and there was a lot of everything, you could tell somewhere in his mind there was still a little bit left of Sméagol, the hobbit. And the fact that he didn’t fully fade into the wraith world, nor get caught by Sauron over these last six hundred years kind of shows that, but then again, that’s just hobbits. You guys have surprisingly good constitution and stamina, and also might be a little more immune to the effects of the Ring, just because when Sauron made it, he only had Elves, Dwarves, and Humans in mind cuz they had all the other Rings. Honestly I don’t think Sauron even knew what a hobbit was until Gollum blabbed to him. But of course, now he knows and he's gonna try to come here and make all of you guys his slaves so he can, I don’t know, put you all in a giant hamster wheel for his amusement or something.”

Frodo slumped back in his seat as he gave a deep, deep sigh. “I thought you said Sauron died thousands of years ago when Isildur cut off his hand.”

“No, I said he was defeated. He’s immortal, Frodo, that means he can’t die. I mean, when you’re immortal you can get killed, but you don’t stay dead. You come back, eventually, but not usually the same and it usually takes a while, and it has been a while. Also, remember when I said that the Ring was like a horcrux? That means he still has a lot of his power and life essence in it, so unless the Ring is destroyed, Sauron can always get to his full evil power. I guess I didn’t expect you to pay attention to international politics because you live in this insular little weed haven, but everyone is talking about the rising tensions and a possible war against Mordor.”

Frodo actually had heard a little bit about this. He frequently took walks around the Shire and occasionally chatted with the Dwarves or Elves he came across like Bilbo had done. They had been mentioning the phrase “The Shadow has returned to Mordor as the Dark Lord regains his strength,” but Frodo didn’t really know what the fuck that meant and didn’t think it would really ever have to apply to him. Now that he thought about it, he had been running into a lot more outsiders than usual these days, and it was clear now that a lot of them were likely refugees. 

“I guess we should destroy this Ring then,” said Frodo after a bit.

“Right. How about you go ahead and throw it back in the fire then.”

“But... last time it didn’t get hot–”

“Just try to do it.”

Frodo tentatively walked over to the fireplace. He’d been fidgeting with the Ring for the whole conversation so he had it in his hands, but when he held it up, he found it wasn’t so easy to throw it away, like it took a lot more strength of will than he was really prepared to give at that moment. Once he felt like he had thrown it in the fireplace, it turned out that instead he’d actually just slipped it back in his pocket.

“You can’t do it, can you. It’s almost impossible to just destroy it willy fucking nilly, because the Ring has a will of its own. It makes people think it is too precious to harm in any way, and it is always trying to find its way back to Sauron. So pretty much everything that happens to it was kind of planned by it, so technically that means you were meant to have it, which could be an encouraging thought.”

“It is not.”

“Anyway, that fire won’t do anything to it as you already saw earlier. And it certainly won’t even be scratched by any hobbit tools. There’s only one way you can destroy this evil piece of garbage, and that’s if you throw it into the fires in Mordor where it was forged in THE CRACKS OF DOOM!” Gandalf used his scary wizard voice to say that because that name is too fucking epic to be said with a straight face. 

“Of course. My apologies for thinking any differently. Are you sure that’s the only way?”

“Yes, I’m sure goddamnit. I’m a fucking wizard, Frodo, when there’s epic lore I know about it.”

“Great, then since you’re an all-knowing wizard, how about I give you the Ring and you can go to the Cracks of Doom and throw it in? That sounds like the kind of thing wizards do in their free time.”

“No! No! NO! Absolutely not!” Gandalf stood up and resumed his scary, booming wizard voice. The air in the room changed, as if there were suddenly a gust of wind inside swirling up all the pot smoke, making Gandalf appear much taller. “Goddamnit, don’t fucking tempt me with that, Frodo. Fuck, don’t you know why I had to smoke so much weed? So I wouldn’t get tempted by the Ring’s spell. Don’t you see, I’m powerful enough to be able to actually use the Ring to rule the world, and even if I had good intentions it would still turn me evil cuz that’s what the Ring does. I’m already fucking mean, Frodo, could you imagine what I’d be like if I were also evil??”

“Please, I do not want to. I am so sorry,” Frodo said, cowering, and trying to make himself disappear into the cushions of his chair, or at least the cushions that hadn’t started levitating during Gandalf’s outburst.

“No, I guess I should be sorry,” Gandalf said as he took another fat rip off the wizard bong, making everything calm down again “It’s just that this is a very big deal because that Ring’s thrall is really powerful and I don’t even fucking trust myself with it. The only people I really trust to hold onto it are hobbits because I know you guys don’t give a shit about controlling the world. You guys only care about food and weed and petty neighborhood disputes, which is honestly how the world should be.”

“Still, this seems like a little too much responsibility for me,” said Frodo, who was just a little guy with anxiety. He anxiously started fidgeting with the cursed object in his pocket again. “Maybe we should just throw it back in the river or somewhere where no one could ever find it.”

“Nope, someone will find it, and they’re either going to bring it straight to Sauron or they’re gonna use it and become the new Sauron, that’s how it works. I told you this thing is evil and it has a will of its own and it’s usually willing itself to give to Sauron, and let me make this very clear.  _ We can not let this happen. _ Otherwise, he’ll be fucking unstoppable and the whole world is going to be like Mordor. Do you know what Mordor is?”

“Uh, well, I mean, I guess I’m familiar with it being used as a euphemism for the worst place in the world.”

“Well, that’s not even an exaggeration. Mordor is so fucking bad, it’s like Satan had a wet dream, and he fucking came all over the place, and everything that survived the explosion there crawled out of these puddles of jizz so fucking evil and miserable. And that’s what the rest of the world is gonna be like, Frodo. It’s gonna be like Satan ejaculated all over the world.”

“Okay, please stop making me think about Satan’s cum, I think I get the point,” cried Frodo who was cradling his head in his hands.

“Great!” said Gandalf, leaning comfortably back on the couch and pulling out his weed pipe from his robes so he could smoke a different strain of weed for this next part of the conversation. He failed to offer some to Frodo. “So yeah, I think I’ve pretty much told you everything you need to know.” He lit the pipe and took a puff and started vaping some smoke rings. “So now it’s up to you. What should we do?”

“ _ Me? _ What the fuck do I know I literally just learned all of the necessary information right now.”

“Yeah, but we have to come up with some ideas because Sauron knows where you live and he’s probably on his way to your house so he can build his hobbit hamster wheel.”

Frodo sighed the deepest sigh. Why was life fucking like this? This was like how seventeen years ago he was suddenly in charge of negotiating all of Bilbo’s affairs and also preventing his house from getting looted except this was mildly worse. There was a silence in the room as neither of them said anything and it was like the whole world hung in limbo in that moment. Not even a sound could be heard from outside.

“I guess I’ll just have to leave town,” Frodo said finally. 

“Oh shit, I didn’t think you’d actually suggest that morally sound course of action. I thought you’d just try to pawn off all your problems onto somebody else like Bilbo did or I would have done.”

“Yeah, but that’s a dick move, and as much as I admire my uncle for being able to tell people off to their faces, I can’t even fucking do that. I don’t like to bother people. Especially not over anything that might also kill them. I’ll leave and take the cursed object away from my friends, and then, I guess find some people who know more about what the fuck is going on and figure out where to go from there?” Even though Frodo had many more friends than Bilbo did, he secretly had been wanting an excuse to leave the Shire and everyone in it to go on some sort of kooky adventure like his uncle had to secure cryptid status. He’d actually been trying to make plans to leave for years but either he kept procrastinating or chickening out at the last minute, so maybe this was finally his opportunity to kick his ass and just go.

“Great. I think that’s a pretty good plan. You’re a good egg, Frodo.” Gandalf stood up to pat Frodo on his tiny head while blowing an egg shaped smoke cloud. “I’ll help you figure something out about travel plans and stuff. I’m pretty good at organizing adventuring parties. Ideally you’d have, like, thirteen dwarves to accompany you, but in this case your hobbit friends would probably do. But make sure it’s someone you can wholeheartedly trust, because you never know who could be an enemy spy watching your every MOMENT!”

Suddenly, Gandalf was across the room with the scary voice, and it was like his wizard powers had turned on again. In a move that took about a millisecond, he fucking punched open the window with his wizard fist and stuck his hand out like he was noodling for catfish. There was a strangled squawk, and Gandalf pulled up by the ears Sam, the gardener.

“Well, well, well,” Gandalf boomed at full volume directly into Sam’s face. “If it isn’t Dumbass Gamgee, fucking eavesdropping like a cunt!”

“Please sir!” Sam was already in tears as he was suddenly face to face with the hugest and most terrifying person he had ever met. “I was just trimming the bushes by the window, sir! No eaves or dropping, sir! We don’t even have eaves, sir, just the bush, which was being clipped by me, sir!” Sam held up his garden shears to prove his point.

“Bull-fucking-shit. You were gardening under this window when I first got here, and at first we could hear you snippin and a-clippin just fine. Seems a long time to spend on one shitty window, and we haven’t heard you for a bit. I just was thinking it’s been mighty motherfucking quiet.” 

Sam went wide eyed, “Please sir! Don’t kill me sir or turn me into an ancient frog sir, please. My dad’s really old–” Gandalf squeezed his ear tighter and Sam yelped.

“Gandalf, can you maybe calm down a little?” yelled Frodo, who was equally stressed out. “It’s just my gardener who’s never done anything wrong in his life before.”

“This is very serious, Frodo,” said Gandalf, but he loosened his hold on Sam’s ear nonetheless. Sam looked grateful and guilty. “How much did you hear?” asked Gandalf.

Sam gulped. “Well, I heard that way, way the f back the Elven-smiths got together to forge the nineteen Great Rings of Power–”

“Oh fucking great. He heard everything and already memorized it,” Gandalf groaned back to Frodo.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” cried Sam, “I’m just really good at retaining information about Elves because I just think Elves are cool. That’s… that’s why I listened, sir, because...Elves...are cool...yeah.” Sam blushed and wiped his eyes before earnestly looking at Frodo. “Will...you be going to see the Elves, sir,” he said slowly, not breaking eye contact, “when you leave?”

Gandalf looked at Frodo then he looked at Sam, then back at Frodo, then back at Sam. Then he laughed. “Oh thank fuck, he’s just a harmless nerd. Come in here, Sam.” He picked up Sam by the shoulders and just yanked him through the fucking window, garden shears and all, and then just plopped him on his feet in the center of the room.

“Oh. Wow. Did not like that at all,” said Sam, getting his bearings.

“So, you heard Frodo is going away?”

Sam blushed and looked at his feet. “Yes, sir. It...upset me to hear that, so that’s why I choked, which, presumably, you heard since you’ve caught me.”

“Sam, we didn’t hear you make any noise,” said Frodo.

“Oh,” said Sam, and then he laughed awkwardly. “I guess it’s kind of embarrassing that I admitted that, then.”

“This is really serious, though,” said Frodo after a moment. “News always blows up in the Shire, so you really can’t tell anyone what you just heard cuz then Gandalf probably really will turn you into a frog and then probably kill you so you can go to frog heaven.”

Sam sank to the floor, “I do not want to go to frog heaven.”

“Get up, you dumbass,” said Gandalf. Sam immediately was standing straight as a rod. “If I’m being honest, I think killing hobbits is an unforgivable offense, so I’m not going to kill you, but what I am going to do is this.” He thumped Sam on the back, moving him to stand closer to Frodo. “You’re gonna be Frodo’s first travelling companion, and you’re gonna go see the Elves with him or whatever the fuck we’re doing, we haven’t really decided.”

“Me, sir? Really? I always wanted to see an Elf! Oh hooray!” shouted Sam like a dog who just got invited for a walk, before immediately bursting into tears.


	4. Frodo Takes Fucking Forever to Leave the Shire

“So,” began Gandalf, “I think you should leave as soon as possible.” 

“You’re right,” said Frodo, doing nothing, proceeding to do nothing for several more weeks which turned into months.

This was always what happened. For the last seventeen years, whenever Frodo felt his adventurous impulses come upon him the Big Procrastination Feeling started happening, convincing him that he needed more time to emotionally prepare for his journey. “Consider,” he started, “I need to emotionally prepare for this journey before I just leave my beloved and highly sought after home.”

“Yes, we definitely can’t just have you vanish,” said Gandalf, already starting to scheme. “I’ll stick around a while and we can figure out a plan together.”

“You’ll come with me, right? It’s not just going to be me and Sam, right?”

“Oh, yeah definitely. You’re a hobbit. I might highly tout your constitution and your weed, but you guys don’t know anything about what’s beyond the Shire where everything is Large.”

“So about that, where– where am I–” the magnitude of the question was already so great Frodo could barely even begin. He wished he had more time to emotionally prepare for this question even. “Where am I going? Like, which direction?”

“Oh, well, you know, North, South, East, West.”

“Those are just...all the directions, Gandalf…”

Sam coughed. He was apparently still here and the room was still full of weed smoke. Gandalf fixed him with an unreadable wizard stare. 

“Right!” recalled Gandalf. “You were just crying about Elves. Frodo, I think you should go visit the Elves in Rivendell. I have a couple of friends there and they generally have a good concept of what’s happening in the world.”

“Perfect!” yelled Frodo, partially overjoyed that he had a plan, partially terrified that he could now no longer avoid it. 

Sam let in an excited gasp which also sucked in a bunch of the weed smoke causing him to cough again. 

“And don’t even think about talking, Samwise,” glowered Gandalf. “If you do, I’ll temporarily turn you into the horse that will carry our things as we walk out of the Shire.”

“Yes sir.” Sam blushed.

“Anyway,” Gandalf clapped his hands and the weed smoke in the room immediately cleared up. “Ideally we leave at the end of the month at the latest which I think should be enough time to sort out your affairs.”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Frodo, smiling. He had already decided he wanted to leave at the earliest in five months.

Over the course of the next brief time skip, the borders of the Shire were frequented with a much higher number of Big people, Elves, Dwarves, perhaps even sentient trees, fleeing from some sort of global conflict that was known to pretty much everyone. Except of course for everyone in the Shire who couldn’t give a shit about political garbage like that. What was really interesting to them was that apparently Frodo finally had made arrangements to sell his house to the Sackville-Bagginses after all. Everyone in the pubs was talking about that instead, speculating on why on earth he would do such a thing.

“Maybe Lobelia just finally fucking got on his nerves so much he just broke under pressure,” said someone. “He seems like the kinda gay with anxiety who would eventually give in.”

“I don’t know, maybe it was a money thing?” said someone else who was much more boring. “Must’ve been really desperate to sell it off at that bargain price, yeesh.”

“Um, don’t you remember the pub discussion in the last chapter?” yelled Sandyman the miller, who was here again with his bad opinion. “Bilbo hid all sorts of treasure in the walls of that place. Why do you think Frodo kept trying to stop us from excavating it way back when? He couldn’t have spent it all already.”

“I’m sure the reason why he made you stop excavating his walls was not what you think it was,” said Gaffer Gamgee, disdainfully. “You know what I think, though, this is all just an elaborate plot by Gandalf the Firework Felon. You know Frodo’s been harboring him these past few weeks. He’s probably getting him prepared to go on some stupid Wizard adventure that’s gonna traumatize him, you know, like Wizards usually do.”

“Yeah that’s probably it.” Everyone else in the pub concurred and raised their mugs, except for Sandyman who was already thinking about drilling holes into the walls of Bag End again. 

“Anyway,” the Gaffer began, “no matter what the reasoning is, he’s sold Bag End and he’s found a new house for himself down in Buckland in Crickhollow. My Sam’s going with him. I let him go to spare him from having the Sackville-Bagginses as neighbors. It’s gonna be rough.”

“F.” Everyone in the pub except for Sandyman raised their mugs to pay respects for the old guy.

Gandalf stayed with Frodo for over two months. I guess they were, like, looking at maps and talking about being secretive and how to go off the grid and probably also smoking a lot of weed, but one day Gandalf said he had to head out of the Shire “because of reasons.”

“Oh God, Gandalf please tell me they’re not still out to get you for fire code violations.”

“What? No, have you forgotten the seventeen year time skip? Of course you have you beautiful babyfaced baby man who doesn’t age due to the cursed object in your possession. This is a strictly professional wizard arrangement, I’m gonna come right back I promise.”

“Professional? I didn’t know being a wizard was a real job.”

“Yeah, none of you hobbits seem to believe me when I say that, but I do have to take my job very seriously, you know, because like, we keep the world not being destroyed and all that.” Gandalf started hastily gathering his possessions. “Anyway, I have to go on a quick meeting with my boss. Should be very quick.”

“God???”

“What? No, my other boss. He’s like my supervisor, but don’t worry he’s very nice and not a horrible capitalist like other managers who are desperate to get promoted and shit. He can probably help us with some of this Ring stuff, but I’ve already said too much about my personal life. I’ve gotten too used to being an exposition locomotive, shit shit shit.” He started barreling out the door hurriedly before he started divulging more details to Frodo.

Frodo leaned out of the door. “Wait! Please tell me you’re not going to forget how the passage of time works and leave me hanging again, I actually have to be out of this house by September 22nd.”

“September?? What the fuck? Why is that so fucking far away from now? You have to raise your expectations about what kind of shit you’re currently swimming in. Imagine the hobbit hamster wheel! I’ll definitely be back before then.”

“Okay, but I just need to make sure! You do know that seventeen years passed since the last time you were here, right?” Frodo yelled as Gandalf was already starting to head down the pathway in his quaint little wizard cart and out of sight. He waved Frodo’s concerns away, magically slamming the door on him.

Ever since Gandalf first mentioned that he should start getting ready to leave, Frodo had decided that in order to emotionally prepare in full, he decided he had to leave on his and Bilbo’s birthday, because he was going to be 50 this year which was a significant number and Frodo kind of wanted to subscribe to numerology just this once because he was desperate to grab onto whatever superstitions might currently benefit him. It also would help motivate him to leave on Bilbo’s birthday so that he could not only follow in his eccentric cryptid uncle-cousin’s footsteps, but also feel like Bilbo was watching over him, in a not dead kind of way, as he finally set out on his adventure.

Of course, however, September rolled around and Gandalf didn’t fucking come back. Frodo had already signed a bill of sale with the overly eager Sackville-Bagginses, the rumors in the pub were true, and he was set to hand over the keys on the midnight of his birthday. He’d actually already bought a house and Fantasy U-Hauled almost all of his furniture there. As he watched his things get carted away, he thought about how Gandalf was a fucking liar and maybe he wasn’t actually in any danger after all. But then he thought better of it because he’d heard the stories from Bilbo that Gandalf was usually right about lore shit, whether or not he was garbage with time or with people skills.

Frodo actually had two other very good friends who I haven’t had the opportunity to fully introduce into the story until right now. The first was Fredegar Bolger, who everyone called Fatty, I guess cuz he was fat, or maybe because he wasn’t at all and this was an ironic thing, I don’t know. It’s unclear. The second was much more important to the story and that one was Peregrin Took, who was mostly called Pippin because he was a dumbass who had nothing in his brain, and was generally thought undeserving of the badass names that the Took family always gave their sons. Anyway, Pippin and Fatty showed up at Frodo’s house on September the 22nd, along with Merry Brandybuck (whose first name was actually Meriadoc, I just thought that was worth pointing out since I’m probably not going to have the opportunity to hamfist that tibdit back in later.) Together, the four of them packed up the last of the furniture that needed to be carted off to Frodo’s new house in Crickhollow.

“Oh,” thought Frodo, “My dear, dear friends are going through all this trouble to fantasy U-Haul all my stuff to a house I’m not even going to live in. Oh my god what am I doing? Where the FUCK is Gandalf?” 

“Frodo, you look a little tense,” noticed Merry. “Wanna smoke a bowl?”

“No! No, thank you.” Frodo had had quite enough weed after Gandalf’s stay and he was starting to wonder if it had really soothed his nerves at all or just made them worse. “You guys can go ahead though.”

“Great because we’ve already started,” said Pippin in his apparently thick Scottish accent which wasn’t relevant to Harry’s journey. 

“You know what,” said Frodo, “we should trash this place one last time and leave all the cleaning up for Lobelia when she gets here.”

“AYYYYYY! Frodo you legend!” yelled all of his friends. Frodo was pleased that he had, in this moment, achieved Legend status like Bilbo in terms of party-throwing and spite for the Sackville-Bagginses. It was fitting for a night like this.

They had a party, it was an event. I don’t really know how baller it went, but I guess they didn’t go too hard because some of them had to drive to Crickhollow that night. Look, I am desperate to find a way to segue out of this part so they can finally start moving, but Frodo was not this desperate. He thought maybe the longer he prolonged the party until the last possible minute, Gandalf might possibly show up like he fucking said he would. Gandalf, of course, did not, and the night wound down. The sale to the Sackville-Bagginses took effect at midnight, and the proverbial clock was ticking ever closer.

Aside from all the dirty dishes they had left for Lobelia to clean up herself, Frodo’s friends suggested they leave behind one final message for her to come back to.

“I think this is already quite enough,” sighed Frodo, who was distractedly looking out the window to maybe see Gandalf. 

“I want to draw a dick on the floor!” yelled Pippin, triumphantly.

“Please, do not deface this house with dicks, Lobelia will find me wherever I am and castrate me.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” interjected Merry. “ _ Use the spoons. _ ”

The four of them left Bag End with a phallic spoon fresco directly in front of the door as a welcome gift for Lobelia. It was hilarious. 

“Alright,” said Fatty as he clambered into the cart with the last of Frodo’s belongings. “Are we going to head off?”

“Actually, I thought I might walk,” said Frodo. It was an adventure-y thing to do, and also he didn’t want to be seen by people to bother him with questions he wasn’t emotionally prepared to answer. And also he wanted to run into Gandalf, because as Frodo’s anxiety engine brain kept reminding him, Gandalf  _ had  _ said that he was supposed to be coming back. Also walking took slower and Frodo didn’t want to go fast.

“Eugh! I hate walking! Have fun doing the world’s worst activity!” said Merry as he joined Fatty in the cart.

“Eh, I’ll come walk with you. Why not,” said Pippin. 

Merry blew a puff of smoke from his mouth. “You’re gonna regret that, boys.”

“Ah, well,” said Frodo cryptically. 

Eventually he realized that he could delay this conversation no further and he was going to have to meet up with Sam and start heading off into the wild unknown. Merry and Fatty drove off in their cart. Pippin gave Frodo an empty headed smile. It wouldn’t be too much of a problem to have him tag along on his and Sam’s walk to Buckland, Frodo thought, especially since there was an open third slot in his walking party now that a certain wizard failed to show up.

Frodo realized that during the whole party he’d just been necking around looking for Gandalf to show back up, like leaving was something that he wanted to do as soon as possible, and not something he committed to five months ago and now felt like he had an unfortunate moral obligation to follow through (on top of the apparent imperative). But now in this moment, Frodo thought that maybe Gandalf not coming back was a sign that he should stay right where he was after all and alleviate himself from the guilt. 

Right as he thought that, he heard it. At Sam’s house down the hill, he could hear Gaffer Gamgee’s abrasive voice talking to a visitor.

“What? No, Mr. Baggins has gone away, haven’t you heard all of my pub exposition?” The response was hard to hear but from this distance it kinda sounded spooky maybe? “He’s moved off to Buckland and my son went with him. Not in a gay way, though, no my son’s just gonna go work for him over there. We’re working class folk. And we’re also straight. What? Well, I think he left this morning and he’s already on his way. I don’t see why he would wait until the last possible minute to head out before the Sackville-Bagginses get the house officially. You know they’re real dicks, they act like everyone’s in-laws even if they aren’t related to you in any form.”

“Ugh!” Frodo couldn’t hear any more of this. If he was looking for a sign to leave, now was as good a time as ever before some kinda-spooky-sounding-maybe inquirer came to call at his door to ask him personal questions during a time of great anxiety. 

“What’s wrong, Frodo?” asked Pippin.

“I’m just so fucking sick of people asking what I’m doing and where I’m going. Some asshole’s trying to talk to me but the Gaffer’s stalling. Come on, let’s bounce and meet up with Sam before I have to interact with any more unnecessary characters, god forbid.”

Frodo and Pippin met up with Sam at the bottom of the hill eventually. Sam came running up to them, a little bit out of breath, possibly because he was carrying such a comically massive backpack. He was also wearing the worst hat in the entire world. It looked like an empty sack of potatoes that he just put on his head. Pippin looked desperate to say something about this fashion disaster. Frodo, also was quaking with disgust for this horrible hat but was very polite and tried to suppress those feelings like a gay Mormon, but unfortunately that just made him feel like addressing the backpack was also urgent.

“Sam, do you– do you think you might have packed….enough?” Frodo couldn’t help himself.

“Why? Do you think I should go back and get more?” said Sam, completely serious.

Pippin breathed a sigh of relief that he could be funny. “Sam, how could you have packed so lightly? Our resident old man, Frodo here, is struggling under the weight of his comically massive backpack compared to your tiny walnut sized bag.”

“I mean– I can carry your bag as well, sir, if you need me to! There’s lots of room in mine, it’s very light!” Sam lied.

“Sam, please I was being a dick and I feel really bad about it, now,” Frodo yelled, in tears, clasping a hand over Pippin’s mouth before he could make this situation worse. “Sorry, I can’t do it, sarcasm is unbecoming of me, I guess.”

“No, no sir!” yelled Sam who was getting equally distressed now. “Your sarcasm suits you fine!”

Pippin wrenched himself free. “This is a disaster already. For real though, Sam, what the fuck is going on with your hat?”

Frodo shot Pippin a look. Sam blushed, “It’s my adventuring cap. Makes me feel like a dwarf on one of Mr. Bilbo’s adventures.” 

“Well, it’s very…” Frodo tried to find the right word. “It’s very… it’s very...adventure cap!”

“Should we get going?” asked Pippin, looking at the sky. It was getting pretty dark now.

Frodo glanced at the road one more time for a last look to see if Gandalf might show up. Maybe, he should stall a little more, but it was truly excruciating to talk about Sam’s hat and backpack for any more lines of dialogue. “Yes. Let’s,” he finally decided, although very reluctantly.

They began their little night hike, which was super silent and stealthy because they were hobbits who can win at quietathons, and Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien spared no detail about all of the trees and hills they passed. I will include no details because while I do like trees, I am already starting to feel the effects of this story being dragged out longer than it needs to be, but I guess I do wanna throw in some nice little character moments. Like the fact that every time Frodo did pass one of Tolkien’s heavily described trees, Frodo sighed and said “I wonder if I shall ever see that very nice tree again.” And when Frodo passed another idyllic glade in the Shire, he would sigh and say, “I wonder if I shall ever see that idyllic glade again.” To be fair, the trees were very nice, and the glades very idyllic, but Frodo was a little worried he wasn’t being subtle enough. He sighed, “I wonder if I shall ever have to worry about being subtle around nosy hobbits again.” 

“Do you think the animals in Middle Earth can think in Westron?” asked Pippin after he saw a fox running through the trees.

“Um, what, exactly, are you trying to ask?” said Sam, his answer muffled by the clang of the pots and pans rattling in his enormous backpack.

Well that settled it then, Frodo, thought. He didn’t have to worry about being subtle around these two. Pippin’s stupid head was full of sauce and Sam had this loud and heavy backpack that would certainly keep him from paying attention. Frodo sighed, still wistful, but contented now. “I wonder if I shall ever see a Shire fox again.”

The three ended up camping and spending the night under a tree, sleeping amongst the big roots because they were hobbits and very small and could fit cutely in the crevices the roots made. All of them regretted this decision.

“Remind me again why I did this,” said Frodo as he awoke after not sleeping due to being uncomfortable because the idea of hobbits squeezing between big tree roots was just an idyllic notion in fairy tales and in practice sucked fucking ass. “Oh right,” he rubbed his sore ass, “Gandalf told me I’m in mortal peril apparently, but not enough for him to come help me out with a wizard sized tent or something, that would’ve been nice. Come on, lads, time to wake up!”

Sam and Pippin both loudly groaned as they arose, similarly sore from the tree root.

“You know, they always say in tales and all that hobbits can fit in between the roots of the trees to sleep when they’re short of a tent,” said Sam as he groggily got to his feet. “That’s bullshit.” 

“Merry was right, I do regret this,” moaned Pippin. “Waking up early, and now we have to skip breakfast too?”

Sam quietly opened his gigantic backpack and pulled out a full collapsible picnic table and also multiple tupperwares full of delicious breakfast foods. 

“Ah! Perfect!” said Frodo. “You were so prepared! Let’s dine! Should we heat any of thes up?”

“Don’t we have to meet up with Mr. Merry at Crickhollow, sir? Maybe we should just eat the cold stuff–”

“No, no, there’s no rush. We’ve got lots of time, this is a three day hike after all.”

“Three days?!” Pippin choked a little bit on the casserole he was munching. “Holy shit, why did I agree to this? Frodo, why the fuck are we walking?”

“Oh, you know. It’s an adventure!” Frodo said with a twinkle in his eye. 

They eventually continued on their trek. They sang some walking songs, they admired more trees, Frodo was wistful at various pretty parts of the Shire that they passed and of course, they also had a meal break every two hours, no matter where they were because Sam had brought his collapsible picnic table. After every other meal, they took a nap. It was literally the most counterproductive start to an adventure as you can probably get in high fantasy, but it was also as hobbit-like as you can get. Anyway, they were just sauntering down the road in no fashion to hurry up in any way. Even the chapter extended itself even longer by including the songs that they sang as they walked in full. 

Things did take a turn when they heard the pattering of hooves coming from up the road behind them. Frodo’s heart clenched for a moment, this was it! He stopped walking.

“Oh, are we gonna have another meal? Sam, get the table–” started Pippin but Frodo raised his hand.

“No, no, no. Don’t you hear that?” They were quiet to hear the horse noise coming towards them. “What if that’s Gandalf?”

“Oh, right, wasn’t he supposed to be coming with us, if I’m remembering correctly?” asked Sam.

“What?” asked Pippin.

“Yeah he was. I don’t know what the fuck happened to him, I’ve been waiting for him to come back but I guess instead of five months he heard five years or something and hoo boy if that’s him and he’s finally figured out his mistake, I’m gonna…. Well actually I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t actually tell Gandalf off. He'll have some devastating wizard comeback about how he’s busy saving the world from evil and I need to calm down about my mediocre problems.”

“Your problems aren’t mediocre, sir! He can at least acknowledge his lateness because it has been months since we last saw him and that is pretty late.”

“You’re right, Sam, I feel quite validated, thank you. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get off the road and hide in the bushes and trees until whoever is coming up the road comes up the road. If it’s not Gandalf we just stay there so we don’t embarrass ourselves looking like we were waiting for whoever is coming up the road when we didn’t actually know them. If it is Gandalf, which I hope to fucking god it is, then we jump out and scare him, except he won’t actually be scared, but at least he’ll be on the receiving end of our ire before we immediately apologize.”

“Pfft, I’m not going to apologize,” started Pippin, but Frodo yanked him off the road so they could hide amongst the trees and bushes and roots, using their high quality hobbit stealth. The clattering hooves were approaching.

This turned out to be a very good idea, but not for the reasons Frodo had expected. Whoever was on the horse drew near to them, but then stopped. Frodo almost made to move from his hiding spot beneath a tree root (where Sam and Pippin pointedly did not join him), but something about the air became very cold and ominous. He heard loud, heavy breathing.

“Hm. I don’t think Gandalf is a mouth breather unless he’s breathing out his weed illustrations,” thought Frodo. “Also I don’t smell weed, I only smell...an ominous foreboding?”

He heard the rider dismount and then loudly sniff the air for some reason which was so weird Frodo had to take a peek. Very quietly he lifted his head from the root to see a huge black figure with no visible face. Just a crouched black sheet that sniffed the air and somehow created a cold, ominous atmosphere. Frodo was starting to get the anxious fidgets and moved back down again trying to stay his little hands, suddenly desperate not to be seen by this uncomfortable creature. Fortunately he had lots of experience hiding from the Sackville-Bagginses, but as he tried to match his increasingly panicky breaths with the loud rider’s in order to hide them, he wasn’t sure his skills were up to par.

“If only I had, like, an invisibility ring or something,” thought Frodo. “Oh wait.” He noticed that his hand was doing the anxious fidgets in his pocket where there happened to conveniently lie an invisibility ring. 

But then he remembered that Gandalf had been extremely clear about not putting that on due to evil reasons. 

But Gandalf wasn’t here. 

But–

Fortunately during this internal debate the rider got back on its horse and rode off down the road again. Breathing heavily, Frodo let go of the Ring and cautiously poked his head out from the root to see the black horse and rider head off in the distance without so much as a look back.

“Holy fucking shit, did you guys see that?” 

“No?” Sam and Pippin had been army crawling on their stomachs amongst the big grass and bushes and didn’t really see or hear anything because they were facing the ground. Frodo filled them in on the uncomfortable interaction/not-interaction he had just had, of course, leaving out the part about his secret invisibility ring that he didn’t use.

“He just kept sniffing the air like a dog.” Frodo shuddered. “I kept feeling like he was looking for me and he was about to find me with his creepy bloodhound gang tactics.”

“Oh no, I don’t like people who sniff,” proclaimed Pippin.

“What the fuck does that mean? Anyway,” continued Frodo, “I’m glad we were hiding because hoooly shit if we had–”

“Wait a minute!!” yelled Sam suddenly. Everyone was quiet and looked at him surprised at this outburst. “Er, sorry, I just remembered. I think this guy was at my house!”

“What?!” cried Frodo, incredulously.

“Yeah, what the fuck, Sam, why do you have big sniffing Big people at your house?”

“Well, I didn’t see him, he was talking to my dad at the door while I was getting ready, and you know how my dad is. He’s really old and blind and he always describes people in an unflattering light so I didn’t really think much of it until just now. But he was telling me in his grumpy pub exposition kinda way that there was some large, big person in a black sheet who sniffed and talked funny who came up to our door and asked about you specifically and where you were. I think he was also complaining about how he couldn’t figure out the layout of the Shire and wanted to know where you lived? But anyway my dad told him that you were heading off to Crickhollow, so that’s probably where he was headed.”

“Well.” Frodo started his anxious fidgeting again. “That would’ve been kind of a helpful thing to know before I decided to drag out this hike as long as I possibly could.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“How can we be sure it’s the same guy, though, Sam?” asked Pippin. “You said yourself your dad is pretty blind.”

“It can’t be a coincidence though! It’s a big person in all black who makes weird mouth sounds and makes people generally nervous– oh wait, that does tend to be a description my dad gives of most Big people.”

“No, no, I think you might be right, Sam,” said Frodo. “It felt like this rider was sniffing for me specifically, and I did hear someone asking about me at the Gaffer’s house just before we left.”

“Why would anyone be sniffing for you? Do you have weed?” Pippin sniffed Frodo’s shirt.

Frodo sighed. He anxious fidgeted in his pocket again which unfortunately did not contain weed. He couldn’t pretend to hope that the rider was seeking out kush instead of evil cursed objects for world domination. Suddenly the whole situation seemed very overwhelming and once again Frodo bemoaned the absence of Gandalf because clearly the three of them had no idea what was going on. 

“Alright then keep your secrets,” memed Pippin after Frodo dissociated instead of answering his question. “Maybe we should take this opportunity to have another meal slash nap? Sam, can you get the table?”

“No, don’t do that,” said Frodo. “I think we might actually need to stop procrastinating and goofing off and actually try to get going as fast as we can.”

“The sooner we get to Buckland, though, sir, wouldn’t that mean the sooner we run into the black rider again?” asked Sam.

“Aaagh, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, but I kinda don’t want to be in the woods anymore so let’s just move. But stealthier than the stealth levels we were already moving at.” Frodo started power walking, really fast because he was gay, to set the pace. 

Eventually they set up a new routine where they walked slightly off of the main road through the forest but still alongside it so they’d be hidden from any other travellers that might come down the line, god forbid another Black Sheet Rider. They still took a bunch of meal and nap breaks, albeit a little bit less than before, but still, like, a lot for a non-hobbit.

“How come we haven’t seen any other hobbits riding down this path?” asked Sam who had never gone so far as Buckland before. “This forest area is pretty nice, especially during this time of year.”

“You’re right. It is very nice,” answered Frodo wistfully. He looked at the gleaming autumn foliage and sighed. “I wonder if I shall ever see this gleaming autumn foliage again–” he realized Sam was probably waiting for an answer.

“It’s because most hobbits are normal and hate walking and exercise,” cut in Pippin, although Sam didn’t look away from Frodo. “Frodo’s gone senile thinking we would enjoy this.”

“I’m not senile you absolute child! I am simply trying to live up to my cryptid uncle-cousin’s Mad Baggins legacy, so I can achieve my cryptid goals.”

Pippin scoffed. 

“If I were a cryptid,” offered Sam, “I think that I would probably be–”

There was a distant clattering of hooves again in the distance. Frodo was immediately alert and panicking. 

“Sam,  _ please _ finish this conversation with me later but right now I’m not taking any fucking chances. Get down!” Frodo grabbed Sam and Pippin by their backpacks and yanked them all to the ground so they could hide under some more tree boughs and bushes.

“Jesus Christ, Frodo,” said Pippin, spitting out a clump of dirt that ended up in his mouth. “Now we really need to eat after this to get this dirt taste out of my mouth thanks to you.”

“Shhhhh!” Frodo listened again as the footsteps drew closer. He started to feel the ominous foreboding in the air. “What if it’s the Black Rider? We can’t let it see us.”

“But it sniffs things, what if it sniffs us? Also didn’t you say it had a black sheet over its face? Maybe it can’t see! Maybe it only sniffs and it’s just gonna find us anyway.”

“For the love of GOD, Pippin, please shut up!” He clamped his hand over Pippin’s mouth, which was a good move because the rider was definitely getting closer, and the air around them was definitely getting colder, and Frodo definitely wanted to turn invisible right about now.

They heard the sound of the sniffing. They all tensed, especially Pippin who wanted to say “I told you so” but also didn’t want to get sniffed. Frodo was seized by a whole bunch of intrusive thoughts and he found his hand in his pocket fumbling around with the Ring feeling like now more than ever he needed to put it on. He motioned for Sam to take his place at keeping a hand over Pippin’s mouth and Sam obliged, albeit maybe a little bit too gently. They could hear the horse heading over towards their hiding spot and Frodo, his heart pounding and his two hands free was just starting to think about slipping on this handy dandy invisibility trinket and making a run for it until suddenly a new sound could be heard in the distance.

“ _ Elbereth! Gilthoniel! Gilthoniel, O Elbereth! These are the words that Elves say but I don’t really know what it means because elf lore is wack and I don’t get it. _ ” This quote has been paraphrased. 

The rider gave a sharp hiss and rode away after hearing this sound. Sam released Pippin’s mouth and gasped. “Those are the words that Elves say!” he whispered reverently.

“Sam, we still need to be quiet,” hissed Frodo who was no longer thinking about the Ring but was still full of anxiety.

“Elf lore is wack and I don’t get it,” said Pippin at a normal volume. “Can’t we just eat something now?”

“This is no time for eating! Can’t we see the Elves?” Sam moved to stick his head over the root. Pippin gasped at Sam’s apparent disregard for food.

“I see I have no control and my words regarding potential danger mean nothing to you,” sighed Frodo. Nevertheless, the three of them poked their noses out. “That rider was heading right toward us, I think it knew we were hiding here, we’re very lucky I don’t see it anymore.”

“It must have sniffed us.”

“Yeah.” Frodo realized he was playing with the Ring in his pocket again. He stopped. “I think the singing of the Elves must’ve scared it off.  _ Elbereth _ isn’t just a word that Elves say, it’s a name, evoked usually only by High Elves.” Frodo had read the Silmarillion. 

“ _ High _ Elves, you say?” 

“Pippin I fucking swear to God.” Frodo sucked in a breath. “Those are the rarest and the fairest of all Elves.”

“And they’re here in the Shire for some reason! Please can we go see them?” Sam, who had also read the Silmarillion, although frankly the sheer quantity of names was a little bit daunting for him, was on the brink of losing his mind.

Frodo glanced nervously in the direction the rider had headed off to. “How about we set up the picnic table, Sam and wait until they come find us. I think they might be coming this way.” 

And this was how the Elves found them, sitting on a hastily assembled picnic table along the side of the road, munching away at their fifth meal of the day and puffing on their weed pipes.

“Holy shit!” said some of the Elves. “Look at these little weed dudes! Wild.” They kept walking but also staring and smiling and murmuring, “how are they so small? Sublime! Superb! Do they just hang out here having picnics on their portable table all the time? What a life. Goals for my life in Valinor, honestly.” 

The Elves were very fair and beautiful and it took a while before Frodo finally worked up the courage to raise his hand and actually say the Elvish greeting he had practiced in his head about five thousand times since they started waiting to meet with them. 

“ _ Good morrow to thee, kind friends, _ ” said Frodo in Elvish. He’d learned Elvish out of a book so that was the dialect he knew. The Elves stopped walking and Frodo was immediately embarrassed.

“Ohoho! What have we here? A  _ scholar  _ hobbit!” said the Elves. “This is so cute. I’m screaming.”

An elf who looked like he could be the leader of the group stepped forward. “Good morrow to you as well, Frodo. Nice pronunciation and word choice.”

Sam’s jaw had dropped and he made a little squeaking noise as he looked between the Elf and Frodo. 

“Frodo, do you know this Elf?” asked Pippin. Frodo was too busy blushing and wracking his brain to see if he knew any other good Elvish phrases because now he had apparently set too high a standard for himself amongst these Elves.

“We’ve not met, but I do know Bilbo, your uncle-cousin, and he’s pretty cool. You guys lost by the way? This seems like a weird spot to set up for a picnic.”

Frodo finally found his voice again. “Oh, no, we’re just walking, same direction as you. A normal occurrence with no underlying purposes to our mission. Also you know Bilbo! That’s– that’s cool! I don’t– though I–” he tried again. “O great and cool High Elf, who–?”

The elf cut in before Frodo could make this into a trainwreck. “I am Gildor Inglorion. We’re all from around Rivendell but we’re checking out of Middle Earth soon.”

“Oh! Rivendell!” said Frodo, remembering that this was the place Gandalf was supposed to take him if he ever decided to show up. “That’s the place where people have a generally competent idea of what’s going on! Sounds wonderful.”

This got Pippin’s attention. “Wait! If you pointy boys have an idea of what’s going on, can you explain this weird sniffing rider in the black sheet?”

“Pippin! Sh!”

“Rider in a black sheet?” asked Gildor, whose chill attitude was suddenly serious. 

“Come on, Pippin I don’t want to bother them with this,” said Frodo although he desperately wanted outside help but he didn’t know how to politely ask for that directly.

“Twice now some guy on a black horse in a black sheet has been snuffling around us specifically and giving us a real weird vibe,” continued Pippin, ignoring Frodo. 

Gildor was silent. He turned to the other Elves to get the vibe from them. They seemed to have gotten it since Elves can talk in vibes, as he turned back around. “This is concerning to us. A rider of this description following you is not good vibes at all. We don’t normally do this, but if we’re heading in the same direction anyway, it’s probably for the best you walk with us for a while. Our chill vibes often chase those kinds of bad vibes away.”

Sam pretty much started crying.

“That would be wonderful,” said Frodo, eternally grateful.

“Are you going to be taking frequent meal and nap breaks?” asked Pippin because this was a deal breaker for him.

“You foolish little baby man,” said Gildor, “if you guys keep taking frequent meal and nap breaks in the forest it makes for an extremely boring chapter. We Elves will seamlessly glide through these woods with no breaks until nightfall on our Elven Heelys. It looks like you probably needed assistance in speeding up your trek a little anyway.”

And this was how Frodo, Pippin, and Sam came to glide with the Elves through the forest, although they had to kinda hustle on their stubby little legs to keep up. Frodo’s gay power walk was serving him well, but he did wonder how much longer he could keep up the pace. He was too busy thinking about that and also the Ring and the rider and Gandalf and his limited arsenal of Elvish phrases that he needed to continue to impress these cool Elves with, so he kept mostly silent during this walk. Sam, even though he was probably having the best day of his life, also couldn’t really say much because he feared he would ruin the Vibes.

Pippin on the other hand had a brain that said “social anxiety? I don’t know her” and at a certain point couldn’t really handle the eerie silence of the Elves, who had since started to lose the original novelty of trekking with hobbits and had gone into Ultra Stealth Mode: Elf Edition, Eat Your Hearts Out Hobbit Sluts, We Aren’t Talking. Pippin kinda wasn’t having it and he thought this was the perfect moment to squeeze in some exposition that I forgot to put in earlier.

“So where are you guys heading to?”

Most of the Elves ignored him but Gildor was real chill about it and decided to humor him. “We are heading West towards the Grey Havens, the harbor beyond those towers at the border of the Shire.”

“That’s cool,” said Pippin who didn’t really give a shit.

“You mean you’re sailing away?” Sam spoke for the first time amongst the Elves.

Gildor nodded. “Yeah, we’re peacing out. Me and my crew are exiles anyway and what with the political climate and all it’s time we left Middle Earth for good to join our relatives on the other side of the sea.”

“Hold on,” Pippin stopped walking causing a bunch of the Elves to irritatedly have to heely around him. “If you just cross the sea, wouldn’t you still be on Middle Earth? Like, isn’t that, the planet?”

“Well it’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Gildor. “The world is different for Elves than it is for Hobbits and Humans, so when we say we’re going over the sea, what we mean is we take a journey along a supernatural hidden route beyond a mystical veil to the Undying Lands where angels live.”

“Sounds like something my parents told me when my hamster died.”

“Yeah, well, Elves are immortal but their life on Middle Earth can end and that’s just a way we do it.” Gildor shrugged.

“Neat.” Pippin was hungry again and did not need any further elaboration.

“It always makes me sad that you’re all going away,” said Sam quietly. “I don’t know why. Like the world is losing something that’s helped make it more beautiful for so long.”

Eventually the Elves stopped to make camp for the night, much to the mercy of the three hobbits who were exhausted from not fucking around for an entire paragraph break. The second the hobbits were able to sit down Pippin immediately fell asleep, but not for long.

“Come hobbits!” said Gildor as he heelied over to where they were. “If I’m not mistaken, hobbits are known for their abilities to throw down at parties. Well, seeing as we have a few of you here, we thought we might have a little Elf party of our own.”

And that was how the three of them got invited to the coolest party they had ever been to. All three of them felt like they were freshmen who somehow got invited to the senior class party, not that any of them went to American high school and knew what that meant, but that’s what they felt like because these Elves were turning it up in ways they had never comprehended. 

“I’m a little embarrassed,” said Gildor, bringing them to a popup banquet hall tent that had been set up with a full buffet inside. “If we weren’t camping and had to travel light we’d have a much finer selection, but I guess you’ll have to make do.”

Of course when the hobbits bit into any of the food it tasted like the sweet tears of Jesus and some of them suspected false modesty but honestly they were too starstruck and satiated with this perfect food to care. All three of the hobbits, being hobbits, had been to some big celebrations in their day, but this one would be up high on their personal top ten best parties for the rest of their lives. For Pippin it was because of the food, obviously, and he forever yearned to have his own pop up buffet table but alas was too small to carry such a large and magical object. For Sam it was because he had always wanted to see an elf and now here he was partying and mingling with them and hearing their songs and stories from their own mouths. He desperately was trying to remember every single detail but was also trying hard not to get too overemotional to make himself look more embarrassing than he already had. Frodo also was having a good time because he finally worked up the courage to utilise his Elvish phrases and all the Elves thought that he was fucking adorable.

“Oh my gosh! Say  _ Mae Govannen  _ again.”

“ _ Mae Govannen…? _ ”

The Elves squealed. “A  _ jewel _ among hobbits you are, you sweet little anxiety cube! Say  _ omentielvo _ again.”

The little soiree went on even after Pippin fell asleep again, and the Elves carried his little hobbit body away to lightly rest him on a patch of soft grass where he could dream of mushrooms and weed without an ounce of discomfort. Sam yawned and the Elves offered him the same treatment, preparing to also carry him wedding style to the soft moss beds.

Sam blushed and looked over at Frodo. “I– I can’t. I don’t really like being carried or lifted.”

“I mean, you can also walk there.”

“I know, but– I shouldn’t. Probably for the best we stay together, if you know what I’m saying. Just cuz.”

“Well I don’t know what your saying,” said the Elf, “cuz you would be staying together if you were all sleeping on the moss beds–”

“I don’t think I’ll be going to the moss beds anytime soon,” cut in Frodo. “I’m not really tired. You can come back for both of us later maybe?”

The Elf shrugged and walked away. Sam shot Frodo a grateful look. “I hope you don’t mind that I want to stay. If you’d rather I go off to the beds with Mr. Pippin–”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Okay, thanks.” Sam yawned.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to bed though, Sam? You seem tired.”

“I’m just thinking about something Gandalf said a few months back, about how we shouldn’t be separated so easily. And what with those riders out sniffing for you…”

“I mean, we do have a veritable host of Elves at our disposal for protection.”

“True. But you know. It’d make me feel more at ease, if you follow.”

“Alright then. Just try not to doze off here at my feet.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about that, and that’s a fact!”

Sam was lying at Frodo’s side with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, audibly snoring all within a few minutes of this conversation. Frodo sighed deeply at Sam’s inability to hold to his words from earlier but it was kind of adorable so he didn’t say anything. Instead he decided to chat with Gildor, since he and Gildor had already broken the ice at the beginning of their encounter and he felt a little bit more comfortable around him.

“So, you knew Bilbo?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Gildor. “Me and the crew ran into him twice. He’s a very memorable character.”

“He is that,” said Frodo, desperately hoping Gildor would elaborate. He didn’t. Frodo sucked in a breath and realized he would have to press him for more information about his uncle’s whereabouts. He started but Gildor interrupted.

“If you don’t mind me saying little man, you seem a little tense.”

“Oh. Do I?” Frodo laughed nervously.

“Yeah, but to be honest, that’s understandable, what with you leaving the Shire on a dangerous quest and everything. Just wanted to let you know that it’s okay and you should take a couple deep breaths–”

“Wait, wait how did you know I was– oh right. It’s because you’re Elves and you’re, like, wise and know things.”

“Yeah when you’ve been around for a long time you start to notice shit. I mean, I don’t know everything, I just perceive the vibes and go from there. Like I don’t know why exactly you’re getting followed by henchmen of the Dark Lord, but I can at least see where you’re at in your situation.”

Frodo was not altogether comforted. “So those black riders who were following us, do you know what they are?”

“Yeah. They’re very bad.”

“Obviously. Just cuz I’m not an elf doesn’t mean I’m blind to the vibes of bad. But can you tell me what exactly they are?”

“If I tell you,” Gildor sighed, “will it help you, or will it just give you more anxiety than you already have, causing you to continue your procrastination situation until your little quest never happens?”

Oof. Frodo knew he had just been called out and read for filth on this day, but also… “Okay, you’re right, but the fact that you’re out here like ‘I don’t want to tell you cuz it’s so bad it’ll stress you out,’ is already stressing me out, and I haven’t even left the Shire to where the more stressful things are.”

“Don’t sell yourself or the Shire short, Frodo. The Shire wasn’t always a pastoral paradise and it can be a place of stress. And you aren’t always a little place of stress. I think the fact that you aren’t literally already dead here in the woods in chapter three is tantamount to the fact that you do in fact have a good head on your shoulders. Anyway, I’m just kinda spewing bullshit though cuz I’m just going off vibes and not facts, but you’re pals with Gandalf, right? He should be better at giving adventuring advice.”

“You know, speaking of Gandalf!” Frodo had not thought about Gandalf for a good ten minutes, which was too long. “I was actually supposed to meet Gandalf the other day which we had planned five months in advance but he didn’t show up, can you believe?”

Gildor was quiet for a moment. “Huh, that’s...not good… I don’t think. But then again, it is Gandalf and you know how he’s like. Probably would say something like, ‘fuck you I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing,’ or something meaner. So I guess you can wait for him, or you can not.”

“Wh-which one of those things should I do?”

“I don’t know man, whichever one vibes the best with you. I’m just trying to be a good bro to you in this moment because I realize you’re stressed and I don’t want to, like, give you bad advice. Anyway, no matter which option you choose, you should make sure you have a bro or multiple bros on your quest because I will not be able to bro it out for you because I am leaving Middle Earth and you will literally never see me again.”

“Gildor, I realize your intentions are good, but I’m not feeling very relaxed. Can you please just, like, give me a concrete answer. What are these riders?”

“They work for the bad guy, isn’t that enough for me to tell you to motivate you to not interact with them?”

“Regardless of whether or not I’m going to take your advice, Gildor, what do you think I should do?”

Gildor was quiet again, realizing he had to take a non neutral stand on something in order to not let this little man lose his mind more. “Ok, my personal opinion is that you leave as soon as you can cuz these riders are bad news, and while Gandalf would be a real help to have as protection and someone who knows what they’re doing, I cannot stress enough the importance of having some good bros with you to help you out, no matter who they are, especially since you seem to get stuck in your own procrastination schemes without the aid of others.”

Frodo looked over at Sam who snored softly again. “I guess there’s truth to that. But I assume it would also kinda matter who they are, considering Gandalf works for God and can summon lightning and might be more of an asset.”

“Well who knows. Usually these quests can be won with the power of friendship and love and shit.”

“That sounds gay and impossible.”

“Oh you’re gay and impossible,” laughed Gildor. “I’m just kidding, you’re a good little dude. All the Elves really like you and that will get you far in life.”

Frodo laughed and then yawned. He was still an anxiety cube but at least he was an anxiety cube who was beloved by Elves. They offered to carry him wedding style to the bower where Pippin was sleeping on soft moss and he finally took them up on it, and they lay him down into a moment of blissful temporary relaxation that he wished he could reach out and preserve in memory forever.


	5. They're Still in the Damn Woods but I had to Break up the Chapter

Frodo awoke feeling uncharacteristically relaxed and refreshed, a very nice difference from his previous night amongst the god awful tree roots, and for a moment Frodo forgot his worries and thought that this might actually be a good day.

“Good morning, boomer,” said Pippin, immediately shattering this brief peace. “All the Elves are gone but they left us breakfast which I was totally gonna not save for you but Sam had to be all noble and like ‘no we have to save some for Mr. Frodo that would be rude he’s going through a rough time!’ like we’re not all going through a rough time, no offense, you did shove my head in the dirt yesterday when we were hiding from those riders.” He flopped down next to Frodo, loudly munching on an apple. “Anyway, I did leave some for you regardless of whatever revenge you deserve.” He tossed Frodo a breakfast burrito. 

Frodo thanked him. “And now we will probably never see them again and they will not be relevant to the rest of our journey beyond our little tryst in the woods. Sam was right. It is sad that they’re leaving the planet sort of but not.” Frodo’s good mood was indeed gone now. The only thing that could make it worse would be if someone made him think about–

“So, those riders,” started Pippin. “Did you ever get those Elves to tell you anything important and helpful about them?”

Frodo sighed very deeply. “I don’t even know. The Elves might know stuff and have mysterious vibe perception, but pretty much all Gildor told me was that they were bad.”

“Did they mention the sniffing? I feel like the fact that they were sniffing was an important characteristic of theirs that will come in handy later, and I would like to focus on it!”

“No they didn’t mention– why are you so obsessed with the sniffing?”

“I’m just distinctly attune to people who sniff, trying to take my weed away or get me in trouble for smoking! People who sniff are snitches and work for the cops–”

“Pippin, a lot of the people who sniff you for weed sniff you because you are underage and you’re technically not supposed to be smoking as much weed as you do cuz it’s gonna kill your fucking brain cells– wait, do you think this whole time these riders have been sniffing for your weed? Is that what you think this is– Don’t answer that actually, I just woke up and I’m already having a Time. Can’t I just eat what little breakfast you saved me and attempt not to overthink my situation to the point where I stop doing anything valuable? Please?”

“Fine, have it your way. I’m gonna go smoke some weed now.”

Frodo was left to eat his breakfast alone and brood over the situation. “Okay, this settles it, I think,” he thought, “I asked for something to kick my ass and here is my ass being kicked. Procrastination is over.” He looked over to see that Pippin was starting to partake of the weed just like he said he would. “God, I can’t believe I haven’t even left the Shire and I’m already worried about mortal peril. I thought for sure that would come later. Pippin isn’t supposed to get involved in that kind of shit. Frankly, I don’t even think Sam should get involved either. I can’t just bother other people with my problems.”

“I mean, there’s bothering people with your problems and there’s also asking for help when you need it?” Sam was sitting next to Frodo suddenly. Frodo had forgotten about him and he jumped.

“Oh, Christ, um” Frodo gathered his bearings. “Was I saying that out loud?”

“Yeah, some of it.”

Frodo blushed. Sam blushed back. Frodo tried to unblush himself and get back to the discussion. “Well here’s what I’ve decided. I’m leaving the Shire as soon as I possibly can. I probably won’t even wait around in Crickhollow like I was originally going to do. I’m going to take this whole thing seriously and I’m going to fling myself into something I don’t fully feel like I’ve emotionally prepared for.”

“Alright.”

“You do not have to come with me, though. I want to make that clear. The whole thing stinks of bad vibes and I don’t want you to get stuck with any vibes that you don’t want.”

“I’ll be coming, sir.”

Frodo floundered. He had more to say about this but Sam was looking at him very steadfastly with a kind of deep emotion and concern that he hadn’t really seen directed at him since when Bilbo first adopted him. It was comforting but it was certainly not helping his fucking case. He looked away. “Now that you’ve seen the Elves, though, you’re not gonna be like ‘ok crossed that shit off my bucket list, time to go home?’”

“That’s not–” Sam blushed and looked away. “I talked to Gildor a little last night, he asked me if I was gonna, in his words, ‘bro it out with you on the road’ and make sure you’re not alone, and I said ‘of course. I bet you he’s gonna try to get rid of me, but I’d follow him if he climbs to the moon.’” He coughed. “I wasn’t threatened by a very large wizard with a criminal record just so I could leave the first time you tell me to cuz you think your anxiety is too much for me to handle.”

“Fair.” Frodo thought for a moment about whether or not he should bring up Gandalf again and the potential ire of a wizard scorned if he were to actually show up only to discover that they had not waited for him. Instead he decided to simplify it. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing? Leaving without waiting?”

“Oh, yeah, if you’re taking the Gildor’s advice then I definitely think so. The Elves have everything figured out, did you see their shoes?”

“I mean, I’ll state this again, technically Gildor didn’t actually give me any advice beyond ‘go with whatever vibes the best.’ But this reminds me, how did you like finally seeing the Elves? Were they all you imagined?”

Sam started opening his mouth to say multiple different sentences at once before his brain decided to work and actually express one of them audibly. “I don’t even know what I was imagining, to be honest. They seem so  _ beyond _ anything I could ever like or dislike, like they’re so old but they’re still so cool. They act like their immortality is something to be sad and jaded about but also they’re still superior beings in every way to us to the point that they have these cool shoes that make them roll through the forest. I’ve never worn a shoe in my life, and god forbid I ever have to, but they still made me jealous.”

Frodo was impressed at how eloquent Sam was despite his multiple false starts. He could’ve listened to listened to him go on about Elves for much longer but Sam didn’t seem to have much more to say.

“Well, as much as I would like to continue this discussion sometime,” said Frodo finally, “I think we should finally stop  _ fucking around and get moving _ ,” he yelled to Pippin.

“Alright then.” Sam stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m...stopping fucking around and getting moving?”

“Oh right,” Frodo sighed at his inability to invigorate his own motivation despite literally being the one to say the words. He nervous fidgeted with the rim of his pocket. “Anyway, Pippin, I’ve decided I would like us to not be in the forest anymore and we’re going to try to speed up our trip so we can be in the forest less.”

“Oh, I do like the sound of us not being in the forest.”

“So we’re gonna say fuck you to this long, winding scenic road that I made the mistake of taking and we’re gonna cut straight across.”

“How? Are we gonna fucking fly?”

“No, we are going to turn our bodies in the exact direction that we want to go in,” Frodo stood up to demonstrate. “And then we are just going to keep walking in that direction until we hit the river.”

“Has that ever actually worked, Frodo? Every time I hear anyone using that technique in any story it only serves to get them more lost in the forest.”

“But it makes perfectly logical sense to me, why should the direction change if I’m going one direction the whole time?” Frodo replied using that gay-with-no-sense-of-direction logic.

Pippin groaned and leaned back because he was also stupid and didn’t understand that complicated theory about how brains stop perceiving one direction at a certain point and that’s how that helicopter pilot killed Kobe Bryant. I don’t know the details, my mom read a bunch of articles about that and kept sharing them at dinner and I didn’t retain a single word. “Ughh, but we were gonna pass by the Golden Perch Inn on the road and I’ve been wanting to go there so bad because they say that it has the best beer in all the East Farthing!”

Frodo suddenly had a horrific vision of them going to the Golden Perch and wasting more time there, spending a whole chapter drinking and talking about how they’re wasting a whole chapter on bullshit filler as they just continue to not do this quest, leaving readers to wonder why on earth they decided to read what they thought was an epic fantasy only to discover it’s so far just been about three little guys dicking around and thinking about starting a quest but not. And then he also imagined a black rider also walking into the Golden Perch and asking for him at the hostess podium. Frodo ceased his That’s So Raven vision pose and pulled Pippin to his feet. “No! No! We cannot go to the Golden Perch! We cannot give in to our vices! We are going this way!” And he marched forward leaving Pippin and Sam only to follow behind uncomfortably.

They walked in Frodo’s straight direction plan for about five minutes before all three of them knew that this was a horrible idea. The terrain was muddy and full of brambles so they were already scratched and dirty and already thinking about turning back. But Sam and Pippin were kind of waiting on Frodo to kind of realize his folly and turn them around, and Frodo had been so firm on his word he was too proud and embarrassed to take it back now. Then they came to a steep bank, also full of brambles, that went down about seven feet.

“Welp, I have kept my mouth shut for as long as I have needed to,” said Pippin. 

“Well you should keep it shut longer because I’m gonna kill you if you say another word.”

“I’m not gonna walk that way, Frodo. I already thought sleeping in a big tree root was bad–”

“Shh!” Sam cut in, suddenly grabbing both of them by the arms.

“Oh please, Sam don’t act like you aren’t secretly on my side–”

“No! I mean shhh! Do you see it?” He pulled and turned them both around and he pointed back to the path where there was a figure on a black horse looking right at them.

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” said Frodo, frantically pulling them all backwards and over the hill where they all gracelessly fell into a giant hobbit pile.

“Sam, make sure it says on my tombstone that I was killed by your comically massive backpack so everyone can blame you,” groaned Pippin.

“Sorry.”

Frodo stood up, pretending like that wasn’t extremely embarrassing and painful. “Well. You can’t get down here on a horse. Looks like we’re safe from the black riders.”

“If I may say something, sir,” said Sam, fitting his stupid adventure cap, which I have not forgotten, back on his head.

“Sam, you may always say something. You are valid and you are also allowed to say ‘Fuck’ in my presence because I’ve noticed you don’t say it because you’re trying to be professional and polite, but I need to clear the air about that right now since you’ve just seen me debase myself by dragging you both off of a small cliff at the first sign of danger. We’ve reached that point now.”

“Oh wow thank you, I guess. I was more gonna say that I think because of all the mud and brambles this way takes actually much longer than the main road we were taking before, and I know we had just been talking about how the whole reason we went this way was to save time.”

Frodo knew this was true but he knew that if he verbally acknowledged it, Pippin would say something snarky and uncalled for and Frodo would have no choice but to threaten to throttle him and then not do it and then Pippin would call him out on not following through on throttling him and that was a whole extra bunch of filler that would make this chapter even longer. “Well, okay, yes. But at the very least we’ve traded our speed for security from those riders and ain’t that just the way.”

“Honestly, fuck those guys,” said Sam, excited to be legally allowed to liberally use the word fuck now.

“I’ve got the munchies,” said Pippin, who had, if you remember, recently smoked some weed. “Can we take a meal break now?”

Frodo honestly couldn’t argue with that at this point because he was emotionally drained from defending his own choices and also he was a hobbit and meal breaks are more important than the progression of an adventure. He had Sam start setting up the portable picnic table, until they all heard the most horrible sound they had ever heard erupt in the forest. It was a bloodcurdling, bone-chilling shriek that gave you unpleasant reverse ASMR tingles up and down your spine even if you didn’t actually experience ASMR and had until now just thought those videos were weird. It was like they were no longer at their hobbit picnic table at the bottom of a cliff and suddenly in a high budget haunted house. And then, as soon as all their hair on their arms and neck and feet went back to normal after standing on end, the sound happened  _ again _ from another end of the woods, almost like a call and response, and the hobbits had to experience the whole ordeal of listening to it a second time.

Then there was silence.

“What,” began Pippin, “And I cannot stress this enough, the actual, mother of all fucks was that fucking shit. I did not care for that at all.”

“Ha ha ha, I’m in danger,” laughed Frodo, quietly. “This is fine. I’m not hungry anymore.”

They eventually got back to walking, albeit very slowly and kind of with an awkward silence ever since that horrible sound. Fortunately they weren’t  _ too _ scared about it because they were hobbits and they couldn’t possibly grasp the gravity of the situation or else it would be just like Gildor said and if they ever found out how dangerous it was, they’d just get too scared to act in an effective manner. So they just kept walking uneasily trying not to cut the tension in the air with their little hobbit pie cutter that Sam absolutely had in his backpack. 

It was also very difficult to go straight according to their plan since there were, like, things that they had to walk around. After zigzagging around a small stream, Sam waved his arms like he was doing semaphore to try and gauge maybe the wind direction so that maybe he’d be able to get a sign of where they had come from, but of course this couldn’t fucking work when he didn’t have a solid orientation to begin with and he just looked silly. 

“Where,” he said finally after Pippin gave him an odd look, “are we? Does anyone know?”

They took a short rest at the picnic table to determine this. Fortunately Pippin knew the area pretty well since he was from this farthing, and Frodo was also familiar since he had grown up not far from here and they were able to deduce that they had, judging by the stream that they had zigzagged around, actually not gone straight and went in some weird diagonal line way far to the south, not the direction to their destination.

“So, we’re lost,” said Sam who at this point was at the absolute mercy of these two chief procrastinators.

“Well we can’t be lost if we know where we are,” said Pippin, eating the last of the food. “I think we’re going to be walking into Farmer Maggot’s land and from there the terrain might start clearing up.”

Frodo paled. “We cannot go.”

“Frodo, what the fuck is your deal with trying to make this harmless walking tour the literal worst trip in the world. We finally have one shot at refuge after another horrible day and–”

“Farmer Maggot’s land is not refuge! We might as well just fucking waltz right into a werewolf’s den and ask for directions. I’m not taking these chances.”

“Is Farmer Maggot bad?” asked Sam, distressed at Frodo’s distress.

“No,” cried Pippin, “He’s literally just a guy. I don’t know what Frodo’s problem is.”

“It’s the dogs.” Frodo shuddered. “Dogs...big...very large...very scary.”

“You say this like we didn’t just hear the most horrifying screech in the entire universe echoing in the forest a while ago.”

“You don’t understand the trauma...”

“Can someone please explain to me what you’re talking about?” yelled Sam after neither of them elaborated on anything in detail.

“Okay,” sighed Frodo, “here’s the story. Back when I was a kid I used to sneak into Farmer Maggot’s plot of land to steal mushrooms because the best mushrooms grew on his lot and he caught me and I got in trouble and he yelled at me and we can’t go back.”

“Well that serves you right, you know how protective Farmer Maggot is over his mushrooms. You can’t go stealing them without expecting some minor yelling consequences!”

“He tried to feed me to his dogs, Pippin! Those dogs are very large!”

“They’re good boys! They wouldn’t have eaten you!”

“I know that, but it’s the trauma, Pippin! The trauma! Also what if he recognizes me, a criminal?”

“How long ago, was this?” asked Sam.

“Well, let’s see, I guess it was maybe…” Frodo did the math, which took a while because he was gay. “Probably like, thirty-one, thirty-two years ago?”

“Frodo, I think your petty criminal mushroom charge might be dropped after that  _ significant _ amount of time,” said Pippin dryly, “which I might add is LONGER THAN I’VE BEEN ALIVE.”

“Look, my experiences are valid, okay. I still carry this shame with me every day.”

“Frodo, not to invalidate your experiences, but I’m so fucking sick of us taking the longest way, can we please just walk to Farmer Maggot’s land so we at least know where we are. He’s a good friend of the Brandybuck family. He knows Merry really well, and also me so I can vouch for him. He’s actually really nice if you aren’t stealing his mushrooms. He’s got that kind of ‘old man who gives exposition in a pub’ vibes.”

Frodo sighed. The logic was pretty sound, and they were kind of veering off into more filler territory anyway. Plus, Pippin had implied that Farmer Maggot might give them some much needed exposition so he figured he had to go to get that good, sweet information. “Okay, fine, but you have to do all the talking because your brain doesn’t know who social anxiety is.”

“But Frodo, what about your completely valid experiences?” asked Sam, distressed, and now also nervous about the size of the dogs because this could mean they were big as in they were human sized dogs or they were big even for human sized dogs.

“Well, then I will have you by my side to comfort me in knowing that at least one person thinks that I’m valid.” Frodo patted Sam’s shoulder.

“I mean, I also think you’re valid, I just think a lot of your travelling decisions up until now were not,” said Pippin. “But come on, I’m hoping he might give us maybe a little something to eat because we ate all that Elven food already and we’re due for our fifth meal break of the day.”

They found their way onto the farm, and started heading towards Farmer Maggot’s house. It was probably a good idea to introduce themselves to prove they weren’t complete strangers so that the farmer wouldn’t hypothetically kill them with his giant dogs. Still, when they showed up at the gate and said dogs were in view and barking, all of the mental images Sam had been trying to conjure up regarding their size were dwarfed by the actuality because these dogs weren’t just average sized humans’ dogs that would otherwise be big for a hobbit. These were like, full-on wolf-dogs, and they were like six feet tall, cuz wolves are very big. Huge boys. Very loud. The second they walked through the gate, these gigantic huge dogs came bounding at them, snarling, and barking with sonic boom barks. Sam and Frodo immediately clutched each other with fear, cowering against the gate, but Pippin stepped forward and said “good boy,” to one of the doggies. Surprisingly, the dog stopped being terrifying and gave a cute and pleasant lick to Pippin’s outstretched hand before immediately going back to being menacing and threatening to the obviously guilty and suspicious Sam and Frodo.

“Grip! Fang! Wolf! Get his ass!” yelled a gruff voice. Frodo shrieked and held on to Sam tighter.

“Sup, Farmer Mags, remember me?” said Pippin.

“Oh hey, Master Peregrin, what are you doing here? Nice to see you. Down boys!” Farmer Maggot snapped his fingers and the dogs immediately stopped snarling and went over to the farmer where they immediately started being adorable and demanding belly rubs and snuggles, to which Pippin obliged. Sam and Frodo remained paralyzed in each other's arms against the gate.

“Oh, we’re just passing through. My cousin over there likes to take us on these walks that should be short but end up not. He tried to take us on a shortcut off the path, but I figured we’d stop by to let you know we’re walking through so we aren’t trespassing by accident.”

“Well that’s fucking stupid. That’s not a shortcut at all if you know anything. You’ve probably walked for twice as long as you’ve needed to,” laughed Farmer Maggot.

“Yeah honestly, if this were a cool adventure story, I’d edit all of this part down so hard. But anyway, this is my second cousin once-removed, Frodo Baggins, who you might actually remember from–”

“Yes hello!” cut in Frodo, too loudly, but he needed to stop this before Pippin mentioned his sordid, criminal mushroom past. 

“ _ Baggins _ , eh,” said Farmer Maggot, raising his eyebrow. Frodo paled and made a mental note that if he ever survived this encounter, he was going to put Pippin on some sort of Hit List. Instead Farmer Maggot gave a pleasant and cheerful smile. “Sorry about the dogs, by the way, I’m just a little on edge because I thought you might be this shitty, creepy visitor I had from earlier, but my good boys really are good boys. Hey Fang!” he called to his goodest of boys, “Show Mr. Baggins what a good boy you are!”

“Oh, you really don’t need to– okay.” Fang had come up to Frodo, very friendly now, and licked him messily with his tongue that was as big as Frodo’s face. 

“Come! Come inside!” said Farmer Maggot amiably. “Would you like to have some food?”

And of course, they, being hobbits, could not say no to that.

“Sorry again if I scared you,” said Maggot as they all were sat around a table munching away. “I swear, I had the craziest person come by earlier today and I was not about to let him come back. Rude as hell and creepy as all fuck in his big black robe and loud breathing like he’s trying to sniff me out like I’m a tweenager with weed. Didn’t like that. Zero out of ten, would not let him come back.”

Frodo stopped eating and exchanged nervous glances with Sam, who had also stopped eating at this. Sam wasn’t even eating very much to begin with because he was still distrustful of this man who had apparently given Frodo lifelong dog trauma, and quite frankly, possibly himself too after the gate incident. 

Maggot noticed their glance and kept going. “It’s a real coincidence you’re here also, Mr. Baggins, because said horrible visitor happened to be asking for someone named Baggins. Here’s how the conversation went: I open my door and there’s standing there, being large and mysterious, breathing loudly, his face is completely obscured and I’m like ‘um excuse me, can I help you?’ and he’s like ‘I am looking for Baggins.’” He tried to do an impression of what this horrible voice sounded like, but it immediately made him cough because it was so ominous and raspy, so he gave it up but at least it proved his point. “So naturally I responded, ‘wow that’s weird to ask for someone by their last name considering we are hobbits and our ancestral trees branch out very wide, and there are many people who share the same surname’ but then he fucking cut me off before I could finish explaining hobbit genealogical customs to this outsider!”

Pippin gasped at this rudeness.

“And he just said again, ‘do you know where I can find Mr. Baggins?’ and I said ‘nowhere around here because this is more where the Brandybucks and Tooks live. The Bagginses are all in Hobbiton,’ and he just hissed at me and said, and I quote, ‘I was already just fucking _ in _ Hobbiton and he wasn’t fucking there. This godforsaken fucking Shire where none of the roads go in a straight fucking direction is so horribly lain out I had to knock on everyone’s door to ask how the fuck to get to Hobbiton only to fucking finally find Baggins’s house and it turns out that he fucking left and I had to go down another one of these motherfucking hobbit roads and here I am back to knocking on random doors again getting no fucking information. It has been a really rough couple of days can you please throw me a fucking bone here? Just tell me if you see him and I’ll literally give you more money than you could ever want so you can invest it in some better city planning.’”

“And what did you tell him?” asked Frodo nervously.

“I told him to fuck off obviously. You can’t just fucking start dropping f bombs and insulting the layout of the Shire like we’re old drinking buddies right after you were unfriendly to me? Don’t you know the rules of society? Obviously not because you’re large and creepy. Anyway, I said something really cool like, ‘I won’t throw you a bone, but I will throw a bone to my dogs so that they could run you off of my property.’” He turned to where the biggest of his dogs was sitting, begging for morsels at the table, and he grabbed his gigantic smooshy face in his hands. “And you were such a good boy, weren't you, Wolf. You chased that big scary horse and that stinky rude man out of the farm because you’re so  _ good _ at your job and deserve all the snugglies and treats, you do!” 

“He is the best boy!” said Pippin, crying with a mouthful of bread.

“Anyway,” said Farmer Maggot, completely unembarrassed at his display of babytalking to his dog (and rightfully so), “I’m actually glad you’re here because after that asshole left, I decided that should I ever run into you, instead of turning you in, I would befriend you.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” said Frodo. Sam was not convinced, but Frodo remained hopeful that maybe he would be able to leave behind the mushroom stain on his conscience if it turned out that Farmer Maggot had his misdeeds.

“It’s funny. It has been a while, but I do remember you from back when you used to steal mushrooms,” Maggot continued.

_ Goddamnit, _ thought Frodo.

“A little bit of an obnoxious teen prankster, but not ill-meaning. A good kid.”

_ Ungoddamnit _ , thought Frodo, hopeful again.

“Although, I always thought it was a huge shame that you had to go and move to Hobbiton where the people are weird and rude and smell bad.”

“Um,” said Sam who had lived in Hobbiton all his life.

“Anyway, I assume it was your cryptid uncle-cousin, Bilbo, my guest was looking for, because honestly, he seems like more the type of guy he associates with. I hear you’re staying in Buckland for good now, which I think is for the best, cuz this just proves Hobbiton is probably full of these weird large rude people.”

“UM,” said Sam, louder this time. He was ignored because Farmer Maggot needed to get out as much dialogue as he possibly could for the exposition and also so he could establish a lovable personality type that would certainly return later in the book.

“It  _ was _ your uncle that weird guy was looking for, right?”

Frodo was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, that would make the most sense. I haven’t really met your guest, but I did know someone was asking after a Mr. Baggins shortly before I left Hobbiton–”

“Yeah, at my house which smells FINE and where he was UNWELCOME,” interjected Sam, who was ignored again.

“I have been trying to avoid him, if I’m honest,” continued Frodo. “Them if there’s more than just one. They really do give off bad vibes, which I’m sure you picked up on.”

“I sure did. Do you need a ride the rest of the way so you can further avoid them?”

Pippin excitedly tried to rid his mouth of bread so he could respond. “A ride? You mean we have the choice to not walk?? You mean we can end this endless foot walking through the forest and actually get to our destination in a timely manner? Mr. Maggot, you are a saint! Of course we will–”

Sam curtly pulled Frodo aside and whispered through his teeth. “We can’t just accept a ride from this guy who gave you lifelong trauma and an unfortunate fear of dogs. Also he literally just implied that me and my family smell bad.”

“Sam, I understand you have very well meaning intentions, but the fire under my ass that I regretfully wished to be lit has been lit and we actually need to start this quest for real, so I’m leaning more towards taking whatever method we can to expedite this chapter as fast as possible.”

“But the trauma, Frodo!  _ The trauma _ !”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll get new, better trauma,” he replied, not realizing what he was bringing down upon himself. He turned to Farmer Maggot. “Thanks for being so kind to me, despite the fact that I was a horrible little shitlord to you.”

Maggot laughed. “Oh, don’t beat yourself up about it. You weren’t so bad.”

“If he wasn’t so bad, why did _ you threaten him with death at a young and impressionable age?”  _ groaned Sam, who by this point realized that nobody was going to listen to him so he figured he could just say whatever he wanted.

“I’ll try not to beat myself up about things that happened over thirty years ago, but to be honest, I’m not very good at that,” said Frodo. “But thank you also for deciding to spite the black rider who came to your door instead of turning me over to him. I’ve always thought that people who could spite people directly to their faces were absolute legends. We will take the ride!”

Even though Sam did make a valid and salient point about easily forgiving those who caused you trauma, they did take the ride and it saved me a shit ton of writing. Also, it turned out that Farmer Maggot was just a friendly mushroom man who loved his dogs a lot and used them for intimidation tactics. He was just very protective of his mushrooms, which all hobbits are, because did I mention this in the prologue about a character trait about hobbits? That hobbits are, like, obsessed with mushrooms? Because they are, and if you try to steal a hobbit’s mushrooms, that hobbit, according to Shire rules, is legally allowed to go feral on you. So Frodo actually did commit a felony misdemeanor when he was a child and Farmer Maggot was very kind of him for forgiving him. Sam was still, nonetheless, quiet and distrustful for most of the ride, formulating an escape plan from their little hobbit wagon for if Farmer Maggot ever tried it.

“Okay, Sam, but what would you have done if some tweenager had stolen your mushrooms which you had lovingly grown?” asked Frodo.

“Well, the tweenager would absolutely have to catch these hands.” Sam raised his sturdy, unhesitating hands to demonstrate. “But I would also probably be crying the entire time so I would only be half as intimidating.”

“Oh mood.”

I’ve decided not to write any more dialogue for this portion of the trip. As the night drew darker, a heavy fog grew thick and it made Pippin fall asleep. However, to Frodo, the fog just made the whole trip seem more ominous. And even though they reached the ferry gate at the Brandywine River which would lead into Buckland much sooner than they would have if they had kept walking, Frodo felt like this ride lasted a thousand years.

“God, I hope my upcoming journey won’t be full of these long, tense stretches with no dialogue,” he thought.

They were just about to reach the gate when they heard the clip-clop of hooves coming up the road from in front of them. Maggot stopped the cart. 

_ This is the moment _ , Frodo thought,  _ where we will prove whether Maggot was someone we could trust, or if he really will hand us over to the Black Rider. _

Sam clutched Frodo’s arm, ready to fucking jump out and bolt with the both of them. The tension was even thicker than the fog, so thick you could cut a circle out of it with a knife and eat it like Scooby Doo. 

Suddenly Maggot jumped out of the cart and tossed the reins over to Sam who confusedly caught them, thinking that this whole time Maggot didn’t trust him because he was from Hobbiton.

“Don’t come any closer!” shouted Maggot, in his scary intimidating voice. “Who are you and where are you going?”

“Um, I’m looking for my friend, Mr. Baggins?” said a voice. 

“Wait a second, I know this voice,” said Frodo, climbing out of the cart.

“Merry Brandybuck!” yelled Farmer Maggot, “Is that you?”

Merry came closer and into much better view, and now that he was here with his little lantern and fat little hobbit pony, it was kind of hilarious that anyone could have ever mistook this baby man for something spooky. “Yes! Hello! Hi! I got kind of nervous there, it sounded for a moment like you mistook me for something spooky.” He noticed Frodo who had approached him. “And there you are! Holy shit, you took a long fucking time, I thought you might have died or gotten lost before I realized you were probably just prolonging the walk as long as possible.”

Frodo blushed. Pippin sat up in the cart, a little drowsily. “It was torture! We almost didn’t even take Mr. Maggot’s cart ride offer and I almost decided to evaporate right there.”

“Well, thank god you did get a ride, especially from Farmer Maggot, my extremely trustworthy friend!”

Maggot laughed. “They are lucky, although I thought they were trespassers at first and I almost set my dogs on them. I don’t think this one ever thought I was trustworthy since then.” He motioned towards Sam, who was beet red now and grateful for the fog for obscuring this.

“Sam, you should be more trusting!” said Merry, helping him and Pippin out of the cart. 

“Well I guess I should be off then!” said Farmer Maggot. “Make sure to swing by and come pet my dogs whenever you’d like! Oh! And here’s a parting gift from me, Mr. Baggins. May those assholes never find you.” He produced a basket from somewhere and handed it to Frodo before driving off into the ether and out of this story as fast as he had come in because as much as you probably want it, we cannot waste more time in this story going back to visit Farmer Maggot and his big, good dogs.

Frodo lifted the lid of the basket. “Ha! Haha! Heh! Ha!” he laughed, quasi-nervously, quasi-genuinely amused.

“Why are you making these weird laugh sounds with your mouth?” asked Pippin.

Frodo tilted the basket to reveal a delectable selection of Farmer Maggot’s most desirable and stealable mushrooms.


	6. Turns out Frodo’s Friends are Ride or Die and I Love Them

“Well, let’s get going! I’m sure that what with how long you’ve stretched out this trip, Frodo, you’ve had enough time to emotionally prepare for the big move,” said Merry. Frodo could not argue, since by this point he realized he probably would never be emotionally prepared to actually set off on a dangerous journey and leave his old life behind.

They walked down to the ferry, which turned out to be pretty close, and boarded. Sam was a little hesitant because he had been trained from birth that water and boats are bad and not good, but he knew he was on thin ice with everyone because of his opinions towards Farmer Maggot so he tried not to complain. Also, Sam knew that as loveable characters as they were, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, were all still, objectively, rich bitches. 

As they crossed the river toward Boat Country (Buckland), they could see Brandy Hall, which was a massive mansion of a hobbit home because it contained branches upon branches of extended family under one singular roof (described by Tolkien as virtually a small independent country). Merry was currently in line to be the next head of the Brandybuck family and therefore master of this gigantic pseudo-city-state. Pippin, a Took, was also the heir to a fancy family title and probably would also inherit the role of thain (which I guess is why he was Scottish in the movie cuz I’ve only ever heard of thains in Macbeth, but I don’t fucking know anything about silly British titles, I’m American, I say the word couch). And, of course, Frodo, also from a fancy family, had until just recently owned the fanciest house in Hobbiton, even if he wasn’t inheriting an undeserved government position in the Shire, he still was bougie as hell. Anyway, Sam meanwhile wasn’t necessarily poor, he was just not part of the fucking hobbit one percent, so they all probably thought he was impoverished no matter what like in Ouran High School Host Club, so he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Still, he sighed and looked back. If he took one more step it would be the farthest from home he’d ever been. The boat surged forward and Sam sighed again. Now it was the farthest from home he’d ever been. The boat continued forward, uncaring. Now it was the farthest from home he’d ever been– but since I didn’t really invent that old ass joke to begin with, the others likely took Sam’s wistfulness as perhaps a discomfort for the water. After all, pretty much the only hobbits in the Shire that aren’t uncomfortable with water are the ones who live in Buckland and regularly have to deal with the river, so of course this means all sensible, water-fearing hobbits should be xenophobic to them.

The ferry ride was about as slow as the cart, because of course it was. Even the methods that they took to speed up the journey still slowed down the journey. “Will they ever do anything about that pesky Ring of Power? Where’s Legolas?” You might ask. Patience. Almost none of those characters are going to show up until the second part of my abridged series because we have a lot of hobbit nonsense to slog through but at least they’re extremely relatable.

They docked the ferry. “Are you going to want to cook those mushrooms for supper?” asked Merry, pointing at Frodo’s basket. Supper is, I think, a hobbit’s seventh official meal of the day, but I haven’t really been keeping track. 

“We already ate supper at Farmer Maggot’s place,” said Frodo, clutching his basket tightly, torn between whether he wanted to eat them as soon as possible in a well prepared manner or making sure these did not get shared in any form. “But...” started Frodo tentatively.

“I was hoping you would say that!” said Merry, enthusiastically prying the basket from Frodo’s gay little fingers at this slightest bit of hesitation. “I’ll ride ahead and start cooking these up for you. Fatty’s already at the house. Pippin knows the way.”

Pippin yawned. “I do? Oh, right, I guess I do–”

“Shh! Look!” hissed Sam suddenly. He had still been looking back wistfully towards the other side of the river thinking about how this was the farthest from home he’d ever been. 

“I don’t see anything, it’s foggy as shit,” said Pippin, squinting.

“Shh!” Sam pointed. Across the river was the black rider, ominously gazing at them.

“How the fuck did you see that through the fog, Sam?” 

“Shut up, Pippin!” hissed Frodo, clamping his hand over Pippin’s mouth. “Let’s get out of here.”

They started running away.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” said Merry.

“That’s the Spooky Vibe Man. We’ve been avoiding him for the last three days.”

“What the fuck? Is that why you and Farmer Maggot were so weird to me when you met up with me?”

“Yes, but look, I’ll explain later. Right now we gotta outrun the vibes before he fucking swims across the river with his magical, evil horse.”

“Hold on, horses can swim?”

“Well, not usually across rivers, don’t worry, Sam. Fortunately we just took the ferry so it’s only on this side and we’re not gonna row it back for anyone so he’ll probably have to walk the long way to another one to get over to our side, but we should still outrun the vibes if you say we should.”

“Who the fuck is talking? I’m Pippin!” 

The fog was thick enough it wiped away the tags on all the dialogue as they sneakily moved out of sight, hoping the Spooky Vibe Man wasn’t watching their movements.

“Well, it seems like I missed an Event,” said Merry, getting on his horse.

“I promise you, it was not that eventful,” replied Pippin.

“We did see Elves though,” mentioned Sam.

“Oh, right. Yeah I’ve already completely forgotten about that.”

“We’ll summarize for you when we get to the house, Merry. I want those fucking mushrooms so fucking bad I have barely any room for other thoughts,” said Frodo, and one of those few remaining thoughts was how to segue out of this goddamn segment and into the part where they’re suddenly at the house without it being choppy or fourth wall breaking, but whatever. They made it to the house eventually.

The house was actually super cute and cottagecore. It was remote and far away from everything, selected so that Frodo could sneak out as quietly as possible without being seen by nosy neighbors. It was also right by the big Hedge, which was how the Buckland hobbits referred to the big barrier between Buckland and the Old Spooky Forest. The house was only one story tall and had a grass roof, so it was about as close you could get to a comfy hobbit hole smial. Motherfucking google docs just changed smial to smile not once but three fucking times goddamn it, did you even read the prologue you fake fan? Ugh sorry, anyway, it was about as close as you could get to a smial, which were actually few and far between since they were mainly for the fairly wealthy, keeping that adorable rustic hobbity pastoral paradise charm. And of course, when they walked into the house, it was even cozier on the inside like Doctor Who but for cozy. Frodo stood in the doorway gaping at the level of comfort that he was not going to enjoy due to accentuating circumstances.

“Hello Frodo! Welcome!” said Fatty Bolger who greeted them at the door, brandishing a skillet of sauteed mushrooms that he was in the middle of cooking to serve on top of the mushrooms they were bringing. “What do you think? We haven’t got all the stuff out completely yet because Merry and I only just brought the last cart in the other day, but we tried to make it look as much like your old house as possible.”

“You know, so you’d feel more comfortable and at home,” said Merry, putting a hand on Frodo’s shoulder.

Frodo was about to fucking cry. Merry and Fatty had arranged all of his things, and Bilbo’s old keepsakes which meant a lot to him, in such a way that made it really feel, and also smell like home, what with the mushrooms cooking, and some herbs in the doorway, and the sound of the fire crackling. It was like a touch-starved wlw’s wet dream. “Oh god,” thought Frodo.

“I’ve been studying up on interior design to get it right,” continued Fatty, moving back into the kitchen. “I hope you like the layout.”

“Oh god,” thought Frodo. “Fatty’s been studying up on interior design for a house I’m not even going to live in. The floorplan of this house is so different from Bag End, but somehow the feng shui is impeccable here, replicating my old home and evoking a sense of nostalgia, my god I could fucking live here, but I fucking can’t. Why would they do this to me?” 

“It’s perfect,” Frodo finally choked out, trying to conceal his oncoming anxiety attack caused by the fact that he had burdened these people he cared about into doing all this work for him only for him to shrug it off for some bullshit wizard errand that he’d been sworn to secrecy about. Fortunately the soothing lavender bundles hanging around the doorframe that greeted him when he walked in calmed him slightly.

“Can you stop standing in the doorway like an anxiety cube and let me see?” said Pippin, squeezing himself past Frodo. He took a look around. “Huh. This is nice. When’s dinner?” He moved to sit on one of the plumped up sofas.

“Don’t sit on Frodo’s newly fluffed up sofa without cleaning up from your fucking three day journey, you stinky boy,” said Merry. “Fredegar just vacuumed the living room.”

Frodo crumpled up against the wall. “Oh my god,” he thought. “Fatty  _ vacuumed _ the living room.”

“Anyway,” continued Merry, turning to Frodo, Pippin, and Sam. “Since I knew you were coming, I’ve already prepared baths for you so you can get yourselves clean while we prepare Taco Bell Fourthmeal: Mushrooms Edition. There are three tubs in the master bathroom.”

Frodo dragged his grubby hands across his face. “Oh god,” he thought. “Merry’s got  _ three _ tubs in the  _ master bathroom _ .”

“Wait,” Sam piped up. “We’re all going to take baths together in the same room?” He blushed. “I mean, not that I’d have a problem with that, seeing as we’re all guys, I just, you know, want, like, the clarification.”

“Yeah, you’re all gonna go have your baths at the same time because I want you guys to waste as little time as possible. You seem to have done enough useless filler activities over the last three days taking your time getting here.”

“Then this would be the perfect time to spend a whole page singing my bathtime, Rubadub song!” said Pippin, known for spending hours in the fucking bath.

“No! No no no!” said Frodo. “If you keep us from Mushroom Supper 2 Electric Boogaloo because of bathtime rubadub songs, we are legally allowed to kill you.”

After they took their baths and Pippin literally flooded the entire bathroom, causing potentially serious water damage that at the very least Frodo was happy he wouldn’t have to deal with, they ate their Double Mushroom Second Supper Evening Extravaganza. The hobbits greedily reached for the Maggot farm mushrooms, drooling. Frodo gayly slapped all of their grubby little raccoon hands away.

“These are  _ my _ mushrooms, given to  _ me  _ in a possibly reparatory, possibly passive aggressive gesture. I get to serve them.”

I, the narrator, don’t even fucking like eating mushrooms. In fact, I really hate them due to sensory issues and I’m tired of pretending like they’re good to appease this fictional race. Of course, if I really did say that in front of one of them, I could probably be executed and they’ll happily feast on the mushrooms that will grow out of my corpse, while the other half of the hobbits would just be like “oh well, more for me nomnomnomnomnom” slurping up an entire forest of mushrooms by themselves like some kind of space hose. The point is, don’t get between a hobbit and their mushrooms because the Passion is real. This passion was displayed amongst the five friends as they inhaled their entire meal in roughly five minutes.

“Speaking of Farmer Maggot,” said Merry, wiping his mouth of the remains of his gluttony, “When we met, he was acting funny like he was kinda on edge. What was that about?”

“Oh,” said Pippin. “We thought you were one of those Black Riders.”

“Right, you owe me an explanation,” Merry pointed his fork at Frodo. “What are the Black Riders?”

Frodo didn’t want to give too much information away. “Well,” he started, thinking about ways to be subtle about this, something he was not very good at but he didn’t know that. “They are these horseback riders who wear all black.”

Merry groaned. “Well, yeah, okay. I figured  _ that _ part out from the fucking context.”

Frodo chuckled to himself internally. “There, he won’t learn any more information from me,” he thought. “Sweet Merry doesn’t deserve to be burdened with the full story of our travels.”

“I’ll tell you the full story of our travels!” chirped Pippin, and he began summarizing all of their encounters with the Black Riders in all of the excruciating detail that Frodo did not want to share.

“Goddamnit,” Frodo thought, so he spent the whole of Pippin’s recap overthinking how he should appear to react to it. Would he pretend to be nonchalant so as not to arouse suspicion, or should he somehow find a way to shut Pippin up in a way that seemed natural.

It turned out he had to choose the former anyway because eventually Pippin got to the end of the story before Frodo could make a decision.

“Well, that certainly seems weird and creepy,” said Fatty.

“Yeah, if I hadn’t seen the Spooky Vibe Man myself earlier I would've thought you were lying. We don’t have spooky vibes like that in the Shire. I mean, except for the neighboring Spooky Old Forest, but that’s not  _ in _ the Shire. That’s an avoidable place,” said Merry. 

“I wonder what it is they want,” continued Pippin. “Like, the only thing we have to go on is Farmer Maggot’s guess that they’re after one of Bilbo’s old treasures or something–”

“Farmer Maggot did  _ not _ say anything about a treasure!” Frodo jumped up pushing back his chair. Everyone looked at him. He kept talking, too loudly, “He didn’t– He didn’t mention one of Bilbo’s treasures. That’s just your guess. It’s a guess!”

The others were quiet for a moment. “Well,” Pippin finally said, “is it a good guess?”

Frodo was sweating. His hand drifted to his pocket for a second. The innocent looks on his friends’ faces made him draw it away. How long was he going to be able to keep this up. “Well…maybe. It could be about any number of things Bilbo had or did in the past, but the fact remains they are looking for him, or for me, and they are Not Good and very bad, and I don’t–” he wondered if he should continue. “I don’t feel safe.” He sank back down in his chair. 

“Frodo,” said Merry gently after a pause, “is there something you want to say to us?”

Frodo looked around at the table which had been carried here all the way from Hobbiton in order to make this out of the way house look like his fancy old hole, interior decorated with loving expertise, cleaned with state of the art fantasy vacuum cleaners, fitted with three bathtubs, warmed like no other housewarming could warm just any old house. He knew his friends cared so much about him and his comfort, and they recognized that he sometimes had his anxieties and that he was stressed out now and they were allowing him the emotional space he needed to express his feelings to them. He instantly felt terrible for trying to be a miscommunicating douchebag for one second, but also he didn’t want to have to break the news that all their loving generous work for him on the house was going to be for absolutely nothing. 

Finally he sighed. He had to tell them, though. They would find out in the morning and be betrayed and hurt and maybe that was worse? Or maybe it wasn’t, oh god, he was about to re-overthink this decision to tell them again. Frodo grabbed his head. “I’m sorry, I’m just… I love you all so much. I’m just trying to figure out how to say this.”

“How about I help you then,” said Merry. “You love the work we’ve done on the house–”

“Because it’s obviously fantastic,” cut in Fatty. 

“But you’re hyperventilating because you don’t know how to tell us that you aren’t going to be able to live here because you’re leaving the Shire tomorrow.” 

If Frodo hadn’t been literally hyperventilating then, he certainly was now in his absolute shock and surprise at this extremely correct statement. The reaction was so comical I couldn’t even think of a decent joke to describe it as his mouth dropped into a perfect O shape attempting to form the words “Owhat the fuck.”

Pippin laughed because he didn’t suffer from anxiety and thought that was an appropriate response. “Frodo, you might need to know this, but you… you are not subtle. Over the past three days, every time you passed by a tree you would sigh wistfully like that meme of that girl looking into the pool and literally say the words ‘I wonder if I will ever see that tree again’ and you did this at least five or six times within my hearing alone.”

“Oh god.” Frodo looked miserable. “I thought nobody would notice that I was doing that. Oh god, oh god, what else have I been doing that’s unsubtle? Does everyone else know? Is Gandalf going to come back and turn me into the very toad he threatened to turn Sam into?”

“Frodo, it’s okay, don’t worry.” Merry placed a calming and friendly hand on Frodo’s trembling sweaty ones. “I don’t think everyone else knows. Even when you aren’t being subtle, you don’t like to burden other people with your personal problems cuz you’re so afraid you’re going to overshare and push people away so you don’t give away enough details for anyone to make accurate judgements about what you’re being unsubtle about.”

“Yeah,” said Pippin, “the only reason we know is because we’ve had a long standing espionage conspiracy watching you.”

Frodo straightened, suddenly not shaking anymore. “What?” he said coldly.

“Hear us out, okay,” said Merry, giving Pippin a look. “Ever since Bilbo fucked off into the ether, we, meaning mostly me, have been terrified that you’re going to go fuck off as well and follow him without telling us, so we’ve just been paying attention to make sure you don’t, like, hurt yourself emotionally by cutting yourself off from people who care about you. Also physically because there’s like, dragons and volcanoes and shit outside the Shire.”

“But I’m not just leaving to follow after Bilbo, though. I’m leaving because there’s, like, real danger that I need to avoid, and I actually have to go or we might all get put in a big hamster wheel or something, I won’t elaborate. So as much as I appreciate...this,” he gestured to the house around him, “it’s not going to get me to stay because I literally can’t.”

“Oh we’re not stopping you,” said Pippin. “Merry and I are coming with you.”

There was a whole shitton to unpack here so Frodo instead opted to let his mouth flop open like a dead fish for a little bit at this before he finally squeaked out, “No, you– but you– but the house–”

“Yeah,” said Fatty. “I’m staying here to pretend to be you to not arouse suspicion when you leave. That’s why I did the house up so nicely.”

“It really was an elaborate conspiracy we conspired. We figured out a whole bunch of stuff,” continued Pippin. “Anyway, we just think it’s important that you have more friends with you on your little adventure.”

“But– But–” Frodo sputtered, “It’s not just a  _ little _ adventure, you guys can’t just  _ come _ ! It’s probably going to have mortal peril! You heard that haunted house scream this morning, it’s going to be like that the whole time! And walking. You hate walking! It’s going to be nothing but walking!”

“This is correct, and we are aware of this being a neverending walking party that we are going to regret immediately after the first night, which is why we don’t make the offer lightly,” said Merry. 

“Except for me, I fucking hate walking,” said Fatty. “Sorry Frodo, as much as I want to protect you from screaming black sheets and evil rings, I draw the line at walking.”

“I’m sorry, did you say evil rings?” Frodo’s grip on the table started cutting into his hands.

“Oh yeah,” said Pippin, picking something in his teeth. “We know about the Ring.”

“HOW?” roared Frodo, jumping up, dangerously close to flipping the table but then realizing that would be fucking embarrassing so he sat back down and tried to regain his composure by straightening his knife and fork but he just started fidgeting with it instead. “Was I– was it obvious? Was I not subtle? Who else knows–”

“I can explain.” Merry placed a hand on Frodo’s shoulder. “You didn’t tell us anything about the Ring. I actually knew about this Ring since before Bilbo left. He always used to use it to hide from people he didn’t want to interact with, and one time I literally saw him put it on right in front of me and turn invisible so he could avoid the Sackville-Bagginses and then he took it off, also in front of me, turning un-invisible and very obviously put it in his pocket, so by then I was like okay I guess Bilbo has a magic ring that can make him turn invisible. And  _ then _ , after Bilbo left, the day after his birthday Gandalf came over and started asking you questions about a ring Bilbo had left you and not to use it because it was dangerous, and I don’t know if you remember this, but I was  _ literally still there _ when he told you this. Like, he sent me off to get weed and I guess he thought I wouldn’t hear him? But I guess that’s just how things are. My secret power.” Merry sighed. “Everyone forgets about Merry. The other hobbit. Well not anymore! I am the organizer of an elaborate espionage conspiracy now!”

“How long has your ‘espionage conspiracy’ been going on though? Not for the last seventeen years, I hope,” said Frodo, only slightly mollified.

“Well, ok, some of it was kinda just keep an eye on Frodo to make sure he doesn’t leave without saying goodbye, some of it was kinda just me being a kid and wanting to know what kinds of cool shit Bilbo left behind, but then this past spring Gandalf showed up and talked about the cracks of doom and Satan’s cum and hamster wheels apparently and that’s when it got real.”

“How did you know about the hamster wheel and Satan’s cum? Those were very specific things that Gandalf only said to me during one particular conversation.” 

“Well you see,” Pippin chuckled. “This conspiracy runs deep. We had an informant on the inside.”

The whole table turned their heads toward none other than the one character who had tragically kept quiet this whole conversation. Sam was blushing completely scarlet.

“ _ You,”  _ accused Frodo, becoming that crying woman pointing at the cat meme, except Sam wasn’t even the cat in this situation. He was, like, that new version of the doge meme where there’s a weak doge and a strong doge and he was the weak doge looking guilty.

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to hurt you. And besides, Gandalf said you should have a party to go adventuring with. Even Gildor the Elf said that he couldn’t stress enough the importance of having bros on your quest because evil can be defeated with the power of friendship and love.”

“I mean I guess he did say that–  _ wait a minute, you little shit,”  _ Frodo resumed his position as angry meme lady. “You weren’t fucking sleeping when I was talking to Gildor. You were listening in on the goddamn conversation! Taking notes for the conspiracy! Pretending to be asleep!”

“I’m sorry! I mentioned this before that I just retain information very well! And in my defense,” retorted Sam, turning this into that meme where the two wrestler guys are yelling at each other and throwing chairs, “I did say that I wasn’t going to fall asleep, and I didn’t because I try not to break my promises.”

“Well, you clearly broke the promise you made to Gandalf about not telling anyone about our conversation with him!”  
“Gandalf said you should take people you trust with you, though!”

“But can I trust you? Can I? Apparently you’ve all been spying on me for the last seventeen years or something!”

“Frodo, I understand where you’re coming from and I’m sorry that you feel hurt,” said Merry, putting his hand on Frodo’s shoulder. “And if you don’t trust us either that’s fine. But the thing is you’re still leaving the Shire tomorrow because of Spooky Vibes Man and we’re not going to let you go alone. We’ll follow you if we have to.”

“And Sam’s great,” said Pippin. “He’s like the best informant we ever had. But no offense, Sam, I don’t think he’s a one-hobbit army machine who can protect you all by himself. You need more bodies!” He and Merry put up their arms to show off their muscles, which were completely invisible, only perfectly round hobbit pudge.

Frodo laughed a little at this, and he thought about arguing more, but the looks on all four of their faces were set and determined and proved to him that would be a losing fight and also probably wouldn’t be that interesting to read any more of. “You guys…” he finally said.

Pippin pulled him into a hug. “We always will have your back, Frodo! 

“Here, I’ve got us a second course,” said Fatty who rose and came back moments later with a cake that said “We love you Frodo,” written on the top with little stick figures of the five of them and hearts.

Frodo saw that to eat a slice of this cake would be to concede to them that he agreed with their plan and was thus condemning them to danger, but it seemed like they’d be in more danger if he left them behind because they’d try to come after him and then he’d waste more time by trying to not get them to come with him. Also this cake was so pure and good it was the...er… icing on the cake in regards to their love and friendship for him, and also its homemade quality made it look extremely, unironically appetizing. Plus he was a hobbit and he hadn’t eaten for maybe fifteen minutes. So he shrugged and took a slice to great cheer. They sang a little song.

“So is the plan really to leave tomorrow?” asked Pippin.

“Well, I’m kind of leaning towards that but I’m also very open to tossing around alternative ideas around until it becomes too late. What do you think, should I wait for Gandalf? He said he was supposed to be coming but he fucking stood me up and I’m panicking.”

“If you do want to leave tomorrow,” said Merry, “we are already packed. That was one of the activities me and Fatty did over these past few days while you three took the scenic route to get here. Also, I don’t know if this might factor into your decision, but pretty much everyone in Buckland knows where you live now.”

“Ugh, you’re right. I briefly forgot about how everyone is always talking about my business and for some reason that’s interesting to them.” Frodo placed his head on the table. 

“Gildor also seemed to be worried that Gandalf is late and he seemed to imply you shouldn’t wait for him,” offered Sam tentatively.

“You’re right.” Frodo collected himself. “We can’t wait for Gandalf. We’re going at the crack of dawn tomorrow.” 

Pippin groaned. Merry slapped his shoulder to shush him. “Which way are you going?” he asked.

“Well, I obviously can’t just take the normal road because we know how that worked out last time with running into the Black Riders twice.”

“B-but,” Fatty stammered, “the only other way out of the Shire not by road is through the– the– the Old Spooky Forest!”

The hobbits all dramatically turned to the window out which they could kind of see the Old Spooky Forest which loomed in the fog like an ominous plot contrivance.

“Yeah,” said Frodo.

When nobody said anything for a moment Fatty continued. “Guys, you can’t go into the Spooky Old Forest. It’s like, spooky! Bad things happen in there! Nobody goes in! Nobody ever comes out!”

“Fatty, it’s not Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory,” sighed Merry. “I actually have been in the forest before and so has Frodo. It’s mostly fine, especially in the day. I mean it has its spooky moments but I’m sure it’s no spookier than Black Riders.”

“I’d rather risk the Black Riders at my door than go into the Spooky Old Forest. Have fun dying guys while I enjoy the comforts of home and also see Gandalf and tell him where you went.”

“Oof!” Frodo cringed. “If the Black Riders knocking at your door isn’t scary enough, you also have to deal with leaving a message to Gandalf? You are extremely brave, Fatty.”

“No, I’m a fucking coward. The trees in the forest can fucking talk and they can eat you!”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Trees can’t be major characters!” scoffed Merry. “Anyway, if we are going to leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow, we should probably go to sleep soon.”

“You’re right!” said Frodo, who had almost never successfully woken up early in his life, but decided that there’s a first time for everything. He began to emotionally prepare for an upcoming night of lying in bed with your eyes closed for hours and hours but no sleep actually arriving.

Frodo, still not able to sleep, found Sam organizing his gigantic backpack for the journey tomorrow.

“Hey Sam,” breathed Frodo, “I’m sorry I yelled at you cat meme style earlier. I’m just really stressed out.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s very understandable to be stressed out given the circumstances,” replied Sam. “Wait, why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Oh, you know. The circumstances. Figured I’d look for some place to overprepare some more for tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about that! I am overpreparing enough for the both of us!” Sam gestured to his gigantic backpack which possibly contained an entire kitchen.

“I’m really glad you’re coming,” said Frodo honestly. “I think Gandalf picked me a good travelling companion, because I think my attempts at overpreparing would turn into underpreparing because then I’d forget everything I prepared because I overprepared too much it overwhelmed me. Anyway, I just, I wanted you to know that.”

Sam blushed. “Well, I– I think you’re selling yourself a bit short.”

“And I think you should maybe also go to bed?”

“But then I wouldn’t have time to overprepare.”

“Isn’t sleeping technically part of preparing if we are getting up first thing in the morning?”

“I could say the same thing to you then.”

“Okay, how about we both go to bed, then?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Somehow this exchange finally ended and they both went to bed, and surprisingly Frodo actually ended up relaxing enough to fall asleep pretty quickly. He dreamed of the beach.


End file.
